Kagi is not showing ads.

Ads are (often) a distraction. Mostly my brain just ignores them, but occasionally they trick me to some sidetrack and I forget for a while what I was doing.

I use an adblock so I don't see any ads on google.

Kagi also sorts results by the number of ads/trackers on them (pushing them down), so higher quality content is more likely to surface on top.

Using an adblock isn’t enough as the ads are embedded into the results, and very subtlety called out. If your query even remotely resembles something related to shopping (in the eyes of Google) you will get spammed with localized ads.

Slightly unrelated, but Google has become increasingly less accurate at returning pages. I am looking for a change even outside of its huge privacy violations.

This is a big part of it! Google has genuinely dropped the ball on search. Kagi tends to be better than google, or at least comparable. Not on every search, but often enough. And their ability to rank up/down/block certain websites is actually really useful!

I searched for certain things that google didn’t show me for ten pages that Kagi did on the first. For example, a divorce filing of someone

I feel Google’s ability to track and profile you extends far beyond your IP address and/or a login

Not really. I set my VPN endpoint to Sweden, disabled adblock and Google started showing me ads in Swedish. Also back when I still used my Google acc they showed me ads for things that I've already bought. Their adtech stuff is way dumber than you think it is.

I guess they created a browser and continuously push for more sources of tracking data via web browser features/standards just for fun. Gotcha

That browser requires an account. Most people use it with a google account, because they are using gmail and other google services. So their adtech doesn't need to be that smart. Why bother trying to track a Firefox user who uses a VPN and an adblock when most of your users don't even bother to hide from you?

> That browser requires an account

Fake news. I’m done here

Kagi has good quality search results (better than Google in many cases), works well and has no ads or promoted content. I'm personally not using it for extreme privacy / anonymity reasons, I just want a good experience using the search engine.

> How is Kagi better than simply using google without an account through a VPN? Or using DDG through a VPN?

More features (lenses, explicit personalization), more results (it’s bing + google indexes + extra), and better results (IMO).

> I really don't like that Kagi requires you to have an account.

Many don’t, but you lose a lot of what makes it so much better without it.

> They can then associate all of your searches to that account

Yes, but then the rationale is that they are so expensive, so they don’t need to do shady shit like that. Currently, they don’t even save your history which is planned as an optional feature for later (so you can look into your own history).

These wishful projections of benevolent intent are thoroughly unconvincing.

Do they accept mail-in payment like some vpn or email providers that are recommended on this site, and use a random string to connect that money to a payment plan? Because that would actually back up their intent with concrete action.

If not, there is no reason to trust their declarations of good deeds. And encouraging people to trust them because "they can make money by other means" is disingenous and ridiculous.

The search results are better. That's why I'm using it. The privacy part is not important to me, but having the best search results possible is important. I'm done wasting my time.