I’ve tried a couple and they all return worse results on average. Scrolling down past the LLM garbage and paying attention to which results are real is less work than re-querying DDG 4 times to get a decent result.
I haven’t tried kagi, but I’ve heard similar anecdotes here on Lemmy. I’m not opposed to paying. The ad model is unsustainably at best.
I think it’s pretty scary. Completely overwhelming the media and internet with near-infinite variations of their propaganda is the most powerful way I can imagine for them to carry out the stuff you’re more worried about, with even less resistance.
It’s not the lack of AI safeguards themselves that worry me, it’s the constant stream of propaganda drowning out reality that worries me.