The why and how I switched from Google to Kagi .
Starting Point
One of the most basic ways to navigate the World Wide Web is through search engines. Not only do browsers almost always have a search engine as the default home page, or use it directly in the search bar. No, searching is so essential to finding what you’re looking for that there’s even a verb for it, and it’s not “search”. It’s to google . And that is problematic, because Google is dominant in many countries around the world.
| Verb | Brand Origin | Estimated Generic Usage | Company Market Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| To google | High | 91.86% | |
| To photoshop | Adobe Photoshop | High | 90% |
| To skype | Skype | Moderate | 7.5% |
| To zoom | Zoom | High | 47% |
Here’s a quick table I made using ChatGTP. To Photoshop is a close contender to the problematic nature of the verb “to google”, but the actual usage of Photoshop is a fraction of how often search is used in a browser, its not even remotely comparable. I think you get the idea.
Alternatives
Now you might ask, “What’s wrong with that, maybe it’s because Google is the best product”. And this is where it all started. I wasn’t happy with the search results I was getting from Google. The extreme amount of ads, SEO spam content and generally low quality search results made me think. So I actively searched for an alternative to Google and luckily there are some! Leaving aside the other “bigger” players on the market such as Bing and Yahoo, and also Yandex for obvious reasons, here are the main alternatives:
| Search Engine | Index Source(s) |
|---|---|
| DuckDuckGo | Bing, Yahoo, Wikipedia, DuckDuckBot |
| Ecosia | Bing |
| Qwant | Own index, Bing |
| MetaGer | Bing, Yandex, Scopia, others (metasearch) |
| Searx | Multiple (Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, customizable) |
Of these, I tried DDG the longest, but I often fell back on the to !g bang, which redirects the query to Google. And that was not really what I wanted since I wanted to get AWAY from Google.
Then, almost two years ago, I stumbled across Kagi in a hackernews comment.
Kagi
First of all, Kagi is a subscription-based search engine, so you pay real money for what is generally considered a free service. So the barrier to pay was quite high, even though it’s not much at around €10 for unlimited searches. But since I could cancel at any time, I gave it a try. And never looked back.
So what does Kagi do differently? In a John Gruber podcast episode with founder Vlad Prelovac, he described it as follows:
- Kagi downrank sites that have ads and trackers
- Kagi focus on crawling the non-commercial web
- Kagi offers search result personalisation (pin & rank lower or higher)
- Other Kagi features like lenses (which that you can search for topics more easily)
I would also add 5. that instead of you being the product for Google with Kagi the search itself is the product, so Kagi has a great intensive to improve the product over time, because if not I have the magic ability to stop paying money to them. And that pretty much concludes my transition from Google to Kagi: I was unhappy with Google, questioned their dominance and found a feature-rich service where the product itself is actually better. So I highly recommend giving it a try if you agree with some of my points.
How
Easy! I replaced the standard search engine on ALL my devices (personal and professional), in all web browsers. Also don’t forget to set it as the default for the omnibox or awesomebar in your preferred browsers. That’s the only way you get the whole unaltered experience and replace Google for good!