Maaaaan, what a disappointing thread to stumble across not an hour after I was just thinking, "Geeze I've been on Kagi for half a year and I don't miss google a bit! Totally worth the price!"
I'm conflicted; search being good is really important for me both personally and professionally, but...yeah that's a disappointing response. Heck, they could've probably come up with a technical solution like an opt-out or something that would've at least...mitigated, but they just doubled down.
I wish somebody would see this as a chance to swoop in and duplicate Kagi's business model / basic concept but with a bit of "don't be evil" principle mixed in. At least maybe they'd be good for 5-10 years before they turned to the dark side. 