You need to realize that you like Kagi exactly because it has NOT been "succeeded", and you start to dislike DDG because it finally picks up popularity.
Anything in the world that's used by large amount of users are guaranteed to piss off some portion of them, because they can only focus on limited amount of features. Google had been like that. Firefox had been like that. When 70% of Firefox users are non-techies, Firefox has to start focus on the privacy niche to survive. Then the rest 30% vocal techies all start to protest and saying Mozilla has lost its direction and hope to regain market share.
When Kagi starts to gain popularity, I guarantee you they will start to polarize on their features, some of which you won't like, regardless of their business model, because the (majority) users they are catering to are also paid users, same as you. Only when they have only small amount of users could all of such be homogeneous enough so that every single feature they dish out is something you like.
Not the previous poster, but I'm a paid subscriber of Kagi and was previously a heavy user of DDG.
The key difference that the previous poster outlined and you're missing is that with Kagi, you're the customer, while with DDG, you're the product. Kagi is thus incentivized to improve their offering to better fit your needs as a user, while DDG is incentivized to better serve their customers the advertisers.
neither the previous poster, but I'm not missing what was said, but are you missing that paying a subscription for something, if it becomes popular, becomes an irresistible audience to also advertise to? Have you seen Amazon Prime video lately? it becomes more and more festooned with ads, like happened to cable TV. Pay a subscription, and watch ads, or promotions, or product placements. They're drunk on it.
Kagi doesn't have any ads, and serves an audience that is so opposed to ads that they'll pay for the privilege. Sure, in 10 or 20 years that may change, but for now I don't seem them changing that and taking away their single biggest differentiator.
You're wrong, they do care about privacy, just at a superficial level. This means that advertising a service as "privacy-oriented" is a positive feature for the normies, but only if it's convenient.
It's kinda like the cruelty-free labels on shampoo.
Non-techies have a poor understanding of the risks, little awareness of privacy protecting alternatives, and a lack of confidence in installing and using new software. It's not that they don't care about their privacy.
Anything in the world that's used by large amount of users are guaranteed to piss off some portion of them, because they can only focus on limited amount of features. Google had been like that. Firefox had been like that. When 70% of Firefox users are non-techies, Firefox has to start focus on the privacy niche to survive. Then the rest 30% vocal techies all start to protest and saying Mozilla has lost its direction and hope to regain market share.
When Kagi starts to gain popularity, I guarantee you they will start to polarize on their features, some of which you won't like, regardless of their business model, because the (majority) users they are catering to are also paid users, same as you. Only when they have only small amount of users could all of such be homogeneous enough so that every single feature they dish out is something you like.