> Capitalism is the only reason they exist in the first place.
Precisely, which is why enshittification is a when, not an if. A paid search engine will never pick up enough users to survive at $10/mo. It will either be acquired or start throwing in "non-intrusive" ads to balance the books.
> start throwing in "non-intrusive" ads to balance the books
Here is a personal guarantee that this will never happen with Kagi while I am in charge.
There are too many ad-supported search engines and browsers out there. I would not waste 10 years of my life to make yet another one. If Kagi can not sustain iteself with memberships, it will be the end of it.
The initial reason I started Kagi was to provide my kids with an opportunity to grow up in an ad-free experience of the web. In this interview [1] I talk more about my motivation.
How has this broken any privacy policy? To me this seems like general information that can’t possibly be traced back to any individual users or groups of users.
Precisely, which is why enshittification is a when, not an if. A paid search engine will never pick up enough users to survive at $10/mo. It will either be acquired or start throwing in "non-intrusive" ads to balance the books.