I‘ve been using Kagi since September 2023.

The biggest difference to other search engines is really the quality of the results. Before Kagi, I‘ve used DuckDuckGo for a few years, but had to switch to Google more often than not, as I just didn‘t find what I was looking for. Most alternative search engines only use Bing‘s index, which just isn‘t any good in my experience. Kagi‘s results are built from quite a few different sources as well as their own index. Seeing how crappy Google‘s results are at this point, I don‘t think you can get better search results right now.

Also, the ability to rank and block specific domains in my results is something I really like and wouldn‘t want to miss anymore.

Lastly, I really enjoy using a search engine that isn‘t being optimized for advertisers, but for the user. Kagi‘s team is very receptive for feedback. For example, they’ve implemented an icon for search results with paywalls, because users asked for it. There are many small, nice details like that, which can save you a few clicks or just improve your general experience.

That really depends on the service you’re looking at and what your needs are. Google probably offers the best all-round package, but depending on your needs, there are often times good or even better alternatives available.

As far as I know, address completion is supported by almost every alternative. At least I don’t know of one which doesn’t support that.

The quality of directions not only depends on the product, but also the method of transport you want directions for and the geographic region your targeting. For example, Google is, in my experience, very good for cars, but terrible for cycling. At least in Europe, OSM based maps generally include far more paths and details, which, combined with a good routing engine, results in better routes. I have made very good experiences with OpenRouteService.

For SteetView-like images you’re unfortunately pretty much limited to Google or Apple. Mapillary exists, but, as it’s crowdsourced, quality and coverage just aren’t all that great.

I think that there’s a good open alternative for most use cases of embedded maps available, as few of them really need StreetView or traffic-based routing. If that’s the case, though, you’re unfortunately stuck with Google or Apple.

Someone‘s probably just using those ports wirelessy!

While this is definitely a great read and an interesting attack vector, I think the term „deanonymization“ is stretching it here.

As far as I can see, this attack would only let you determine which Cloudflare datacenter the target has been accessing. This would, in most cases, be one near the target, but it wouldn‘t get you a precise position or any personal information about the target. You‘d just get a pretty unreliable and very large radius of where your target might be.

It‘s also worth mentioning that Monitor anonymizes your data before checking it for breaches.

So there shouldn‘t be any serious privacy issues.