Google changes its search box

Thanks for searching the source. It sounds to me like they are _not_ using Google nor Bing directly:

> With Google and Bing, we failed - not for lack of trying.

> Bing: Their terms didn't work for us from the start. Microsoft's terms prohibited reordering results or merging them with other sources - restrictions incompatible with Kagi's approach. In February 2023, they announced price increases of up to 10x on some API tiers. Then in May 2025, they retired the Bing Search APIs entirely, effective August 2025, directing customers toward AI-focused alternatives like Azure AI Agents.

> Google: Google does not offer a public search API. The only available path is an ad-syndication bundle with no changes to result presentation - the model Startpage uses. Ad syndication is a non-starter for Kagi's ad-free subscription model.1

And BTW, I think this is possible (perhaps, as someone suggested below, with smaller and niche-focused indexes). At Uruky we integrate with several independent search providers and indexes, and only one of them (Serper) uses Google's results indirectly — not the most popular (though it was added by pressuring demand). From our FAQ [1]:

> For web search, Uruky currently integrates Mojeek, Marginalia, EUSP (Ecosia/Qwant) (only works with French, German, or English), Linkup, Serper, and Uruky Site Search.

[1] : https://uruky.com/faq

EDIT: Sorry, I re-read carefully the whole thread and it seems we're saying similar things. Your claim, from the start, is about the SERP, not direct search, which is supported by their blog post as well:

> Because direct licensing isn't available to us on compatible terms, we - like many others - use third-party API providers for SERP-style results (SERP meaning search engine results page). These providers serve major enterprises (according to their websites) including Nvidia, Adobe, Samsung, Stanford, DeepMind, Uber, and the United Nations.

Agree. Felt the same way about the first video and wanted to leave a comment but wasn't sure if it's just a me problem.

An LLM answer is not "better", it's in a completely different category. LLM answers can be useful, for topics where you can easily verify a fact (i.e if you ask for a Linux command and it gives you one, you can run it and see if it did what you wanted), or for topics which are more opinion than pure fact ("list some trade-offs between decision A and decision B"). But when you want information that's provided by some authoritative source, you want to see it from that source.

Google Search has been terrible for a long time. But you could still dig through it and find those primary sources. That is, in my opinion, the primary purpose of a search engine. Replacing it with what an LLM has invented based on ingesting both reliable and unreliable sources is not viable for a large category of things. The main way we can judge the reliability of something is to loo at where it comes from. If I'm looking for, say, official US job market statistics, whether I trust the numbers I find depends on whether I find them published on a US government website or on a random person's blog. A number presented to me by a chat bot would not let me judge, so it's useless.

The best a language model could possibly do, by definition, is to find websites and link them to me, letting me judge their credibility. But then it's just a worse search engine.

I’m just waiting for someone to announce they made a classic Google search engine alternative (which they coded using AI).

Leaving aside the user experience, how can this ve economically viable for them? Isn't inference still more expensive than normal search? (plus how do ads work?)

But they do AI chat already anyway so, maybe it's fine