I have a bad habit of mixing personal bias into things when I get into a passionate writing fit and it sometimes comes off as pretentious dickery. I never set out to attack kagi users themselves even if I can now see now it did come across and those comments were unneeded. I was being a pretentious jerk with those comments and apologize to all you kagi users for my assholery.

I do think its a waste to spend money on a search engine, and that open source software instance maintainers could probably make use that $ better than another search engine startup. I am being honest with those personal opinions. But its not my place to judge those who decide they are in a well enough financial spot to pay $ for a service that adds precieved value to their life or where they decide to pay it to.

Its fustrating as a FOSS nerd to see so many people shill yet another subscription based service feeding money into another souless company that makes promises of protecting your data and not selling it to ad companies now but has no gaurentee of holding those promises over time. That's how the subscription services get you once they have you, slowly changing promises and creeping in their money making bs but slowly enough to not be too jarring. Maybe I'm just disillusioned with things after being burned so many times. Best of luck to you though I hope it continues to be a valuable service to those willing to pay for it.