I can tell you that I’ve been using Kagi for a few months and it hasn’t been life changing or anything. But I would say that it has been useful enough to keep around. I honestly like the info dense layout over the other search sites, and I use the ability to push down or block sites entirely so I don’t see the spam sites I don’t want to see. Also, “quick answers” is actually pretty useful sometimes when I don’t want to click on any of the search results. Plus, with the $10 sub, you get unlimited uses of the summarizer, which has been great for arxiv papers.
I wouldn’t say it’s for everyone and I don’t know if there’s astroturfing going on, but it’s been useful enough for me to keep paying the $10 a month
Ugh well hopefully there will come a point when there’s not actually enough people to layoff anymore. Then maybe the game of follow the leader will stop. Or maybe another one starts up where they start over hiring again, who knows