Back in March I wrote about how I have ditched Google for good and become a Kagi user. I’m happy to report I’m still a happy Kagi user – so happy that I’ve upgraded to the professional plan that costs $10/month and gives you unlimited searches. The price is a bit steep considering the other major thing you get is more tokens to access the Kagi AI Assistant models, but I’ve read they’re working on a non-AI plan as well, so that’s good news.

So anyway, why did I upgrade, why wasn’t 300 searches per month enough for me anymore? In short, I’ve found that Kagi has put the fun back into searching the web again. Google would keep disappointing me with the ads and other crud time after time, so I had maybe even unconsciously significantly reduced my Google search usage. With Kagi I have slowly regained my trust in search engines and started using normal searches again, instead of trying to interrogate some LLM or going directly to some site that I’d expect to be of some use.

Every now and then I’m still accidentally directed to Google, namely through certain Android features, and I’ve learned, as undoubtedly everyone else as well, that Google nowadays features an AI-generated answer to your query as the first result. The internet is full of examples of where this AI answer has gone wrong, so I don’t need to highlight that. Kagi, however, does it a bit differently: regularly you never get an AI-generated answer, but if you want one, you can easily get it by making your query a question, i.e. just by adding a question mark to it. I’ve found myself utilizing this feature every now and then, and I quite like it, as it also diligently adds source links to its answers.

Kagi Translate is another Kagi Service I like but haven’t really gotten into the habit of using yet. At some point in relatively recent history I figured that ChatGPT is a perfectly fine translator as well, and that it often seems to outperform Google Translate, so I’ve been using ChatGPT instead. But as with LLMs always, it often takes some liberties, and then you end up fighting with it over some detail. It depends on what you are translating, of course. For example, I’ve wanted to translate some of my Finnish texts to English, and I think Kagi Translate just keeps my voice, whereas ChatGPT often tries to be too clever.

One use case where I’ve still used Google on purpose has been wanting to actually buy some physical products, because I know Google will try its darnest to connect me with a seller, so that they can get some ad revenue – and even then I’ve still used Kagi first.

So, why are you still letting yourself be disappointed in Google results? Try Kagi!

PS. Also try Wiby, a “Search Engine for the Classic Web”. It’s quite like Kagi’s Small Web initiative, as it only targets those personal, non-commercial homepages that you can’t ever find with Google.