[monooso]

Kagi does not use Google's search index. From their post which made the front page of HN yesterday [1]:

> Google does not offer a public search API. The only available path is an ad-syndication bundle with no changes to result presentation - the model Startpage uses. Ad syndication is a non-starter for Kagi’s ad-free subscription model.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46708678

[jsnell]

They then go on to say that they pay a 3rd party company to scrape Google results (and serve those scraped results to their users). So their search engine is indeed based on unauthorized and uncompensated use of Google's index.

But since they're not using/paying for a supported API but just taking what they want, they indeed are unlikely to be impacted by this API turndown.

[DangitBobby]

Congrats on saying that in the most one-sided way possible. Google makes it literally impossible for them to pay for access to search results to make the product they want (customizable subscription search with no ads), and Google also is the de-facto globally sanctioned crawler because they are the only search engine anyone gives a shit about, and also sites need to be indexed by them to survive. In short, Google owns the river and sells the boats, and the public built a wall around it. Google is in a monopoly position in search.

[Ferret7446]

They have a monopoly on their own search results. There's nothing stopping anyone from making their own (hell, a poster did so in the comments above). God forbid we aren't entitled access to the fruits of their labor; the reason you want it isn't because you can't make it (again, see above). It's because making it good is hard, and you want the good results without yourself putting in the effort to make it

[nova22033]

>In short, Google owns the river and sells the boats, and the public built a wall around it.

That would be a monopoly if there was only 1 river in the whole world.

[DangitBobby]

Yeah I mean think whatever you need to for the metaphor to work.

[ipaddr]

They get results from another provider who has authorized access. Google doesn't provide search results to unauthorized requests as many on tor have experienced.

[jsnell]

No. They pay SerpApi to scrape Google. And SerpApi is currently being sued by Google for unauthorized scraping.

Kagi did make comments for years implying that they had a deal with Google for search results, but their latest blog post makes it clear that is not true and was never true.

[direwolf20]

Residential proxies are also cheaper than you might realize.