Comment by ericrallen
3 days ago
Switching search engines is a pretty low lift, especially if the one you are switching from is an ad-riddled mess where you can’t actually find what you’re looking for.
Switched to Kagi awhile back and 10/10 would recommend. The cost is easily worth having a good, useful web search experience again.
Swapping out mail and other service providers is definitely a bigger undertaking, though.
I've been working to move away from Google. Kagi was the easiest and best move. Though Apple's lack of native 3rd party search engine support has been annoying, and it requires various hacks from Kagi to make it work. That's my only gripe, but that's on Apple.
The hardest things for me have been email and maps.
The switching cost for email, especially one I've had since the gmail beta, is astronomically high. I don't think I will ever be able to fully delete the account (though I did delete about 5 alt email accounts I had with Gmail).
Maps has also been hard, as Google Maps is my go-to place for business information and reviews. I use Apple Maps for actual navigation, but their POI and business data is severely lacking, and the lean on Yelp doesn't cut it. Kagi maps is being developed, but has a long way to go, and to get to the point of Google Maps... I don't think they have keep enough pockets for that.
And there is YouTube of course, which is Google owned. There is really no good alternative for that.
For us docs, security and SSO are the big hurdles.