Kagi explicitly promises not to store your history[1] and then takes your money based on that promise. If they do store your history, then they are committing fraud on a grand scale.

[1] https://kagi.com/privacy

I see lots of promises, but very little proof. While, again, running a business model that massively increases the inherent risk compared to the competition.

One of the best things about paid business model for search is that it aligns incentives and decreases the risk of data mining as the business makes money through subscriptions, without any need for ads/selling data.

Doing one doesn't prevent them from doing the other. It gives them more data about you to sell, while limiting the dataset to gullible rich people who think that you can capitalism yourself out of the problems of capitalism (the prime advertising target demographic).

But what is the incentive?

Money?

You are the one claiming that Kagi is somehow special, trustworthy, and immune to the same influences that drags down everyone else.

Like all the companies that realized that quietly selling highly targetable user data is more profitable than their actual services? See all the "DNA analysis" companies selling data left and right

> I can take measures to prevent Google from linking together a full profile

> I see lots of promises, but very little proof

Yet you trust google and any company that might do business with google? This view is some sort of mind game you're playing alone.

Who said anything about trusting Google in the first place?

My point is that Kagi's business model requires more trust in Kagi than Google's requires in Google.

How would you go about proving such a thing?

Evert VPN app promises privacy but actually they don't honour that promise

That's why I said it's an equation, a balance, if you will. Sounds like you are all the way over on one side. We need the Stallman's of the world but most people are not that committed to a single issue.

> The core misconception here seems to be the idea that there is such a thing as a honest for-profit corporation.

And I would say there's degrees. Even if all companies eventually slouch into a google-like organization, at least you can jump on the bandwagon until that happens and find another when it does. And maybe none of the wagons are headed to a strict privacy, user controlled data, and free-software utopia, but maybe not all of them are headed to Gomorrah.