What’s a good search engine worth to you?

If you Google the phrase “Is Google getting worse,” you get an AI Overviews answer saying that “many users and studies suggest that Google search results have declined in quality.”

So, how do you find a search engine that’s worth your time?

Try opening your wallet

Kagi, a relatively new Google competitor, has an interesting hook: You have to pay for it. According to The Verge: 

• Kagi offers “better search results, no ads, no data collection, and lots of advanced features.”
• Kagi’s founder compares it to YouTube Premium: It does what you want, but without the ads. 
• Naturally, that costs money — at least $10/month.

Kagi is apparently just as good as Google used to be, but the selling point (literally) is the control you have over results.

You can limit searches to a curated list of trustworthy websites, block results from sites you don’t want to see, and customize Kagi’s look — essentially shaping the way you want the internet to function.

Ten dollars is a lot of money…

… for something that’s traditionally “free” (depending on how much you value your personal privacy), but there are several other Google alternatives with their own gimmicks.

• Ecosia puts 100% of its profits toward green initiatives, like planting trees.
• DuckDuckGo is a big name in privacy, making its money from regular ads that don’t track everything you do.
• Bing is the RC Cola of search.
• Yahoo is still around, if you prefer your searches to have the warm crackle of a vinyl record.

But are any of those better than Google? Is a good, private search worth $10?

Or do we owe it to our technocratic capitalist society to allow our data to be bought and sold?