Comment by JohnFen

I get where he's coming from, but I don't really find those arguments to be a huge problem. Probably because my "ideal" search engine doesn't exist. I have to choose out of the offerings on the market, and Kagi is the least objectionable of them for me.

In terms of letting me find what I'm looking for, Kagi is the best search engine I've tried. At worst, it's no less "private" than the alternatives.

The AI stuff is irrelevant to me until it starts degrading the search results I get. I just ignore their AI-related features. No big deal, and certainly no worse than others.

All the other criticisms (t-shirts, etc.) don't matter at all to me. What matters is search quality.