Seems pointed but maybe I'm taking you wrong as well. I'm curious why they choose to have the class of problem they're talking about. Maybe they just haven't tried such a solution and even if they have their reasoning for not using could be interesting to me. Is that problematic?
Maybe they realize that blocking ads punishes content creators and they are against that?
The reason we can have content that is not AI-generated junk is that someone somewhere pays for it. If everyone runs uBlock then ad revenue will go to near zero and the only content worth posting will also have to cost nearly nothing. We'll be swimming in nothing but AI-generated spam.
Both very possible reasons. At the same time they also pay for Kagi and don't (seem to?) intend to purposefully use Google directly so another possibility is they often have to use computers they don't control or regularly use but logging in to Kagi is friction and it won't have their usual extensions anyways - that's something I ran into using Kagi. Or perhaps even other reasons still. It's why I enjoy asking - you learn more than always assuming you know why with your personal biases.
Speaking of personal biases, I don't mind paying by any means... but that only works when it's an option. There is no way to pay Google to remove search ads (short of building and maintaining privately hosted front end for the API which does everything google.com and associated does) so I have a $99/y personal account and run uBlock Origin. On other things worth too small an amount to be worth the transaction cost or just plain not something you can pay for I leave the blocker on - if not enough of us are interested in paying to remove ads for it to be a worthwhile method then it's probably not going to result in the downfall of the service for those of us to block them. Similarly I pay for YouTube Premium but if I find myself on a computer I can't or shouldn't log into I don't mind utilizing an ad blocker. Heck, this has gotten to be such a complex topic I'm a paying user for YouTube and subscribe to a Patreon only to need an adblocker to skip the sponsored sections of the video! It can really get quite interesting how people consider these different nuances in different ways. Anything from just don't care about the effects to it being impossible to use any sort of ad blocker morally and everything in-between.
I also don't really mind AI generated stuff, it's no more always spam and junk than the human generated web - and it's not really free either, just cheaper. That's probably getting a little disconnected from search provider consumption though.
I find paying for a real search engine the only option now that there is one. Along with Orion being the only option for a zero telemetry browser makes it simple for me.
It’s a really nice internet these days but I can’t judge or compare the nuances since I never used gmail, chrome or Google
That's not the point of the comment, but is there anything wrong with it?
I have adblock (uBlock Origin) installed, and I don't remember the last time I saw ads on Google or almost any other website. It's a natural thing to relate to regardless of whether this person is using Kagi. In addition, it also blocks a ton of tracking scripts. I would have replied the same thing if there is not already a comment.
Only problem is now, when I happen to use google, I keep accidently clicking on the ads! My ad-avoid skills are withering.