Kagi itself runs on top of Google. It's certainly worth paying for (IMO), but let's not kid ourselves -- it is *not* a competitor (as in, can replace Google). Without Google, there is no Kagi.

Google isn't the only search engine they use (they have a small selfmade index, Brave, Marginalia, and others which they don't disclose, and "vertical information" like Wikipedia, Wolfram Alpha, etc..), but probably most of the results are from Google. Without Google there would still be Kagi, but maybe not as good as today.

I was hoping Kagi got some media coverage and this was an article covering how it's so much better than Google.

My problem is with companies who start by declaring they are going to take on Google. These kind of companies are nowhere to be found a few years later.