I hate Google, but whenever I tried (for months at a time) to use Duckduckgo or Brave search I had a terrible experience. In one case buying shoes brought me to a scam copycat website that Google never would have done. More importantly the searches just feel fuzzier than Google. Which is the opposite of what I want! How come no one trusts me to use literal strings.

Or is the indexing just worse and Google wins?

That's why I'm wary of Kagi. Love privacy and customization. But functionality kind of matters, too. I don't want to buy a smart phone that sucks at making basic phone calls.