Updates to our web search products and Programmable Search Engine capabilities

This matters much more than people (and evidently those within Google) realize

It's driven by my own personal nostalgia for the early Internet, and to find interesting hidden corners of the Internet that are becoming increasingly hard to find on Google after you wade through all of the sponsored results and spam in the first few pages...

[0]> 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]

[0]> The current interim approach (current as of Jan 21, 2026)

[0]> 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.

I’m an avid Kagi user, and it seems like Kagi and some other notable interested parties have _already_ been unable to do get what they want/need with Google’s index.

[0]> The fact that we - and companies like Stanford, Nvidia, Adobe, and the United Nations - have had to rely on third-party vendors is a symptom of the closed ecosystem, not a preference.

Hopefully someone here can clarify for me, or enumerate some of these “third-party vendors” who seem like they will/might/could be directly affected by this.

[0] antibabelic > relevant https://blog.kagi.com/waiting-dawn-search [1] https://blog.kagi.com/dawn-new-era-search > [^1]: A note on Google’s existing APIs: Google offers PSE, designed for adding search boxes to websites. It can return web results, but with reduced scope and terms tailored for that narrow use case. More recently, Google offers Grounding with Google Search through Vertex AI, intended for grounding LLM responses. Neither is general-purpose index access. Programmable Search Engine is not designed for building competitive search. Grounding with Google Search is priced at $35 per 1,000 requests - economically unviable for search at scale, and structured as an AI add-on rather than standalone index syndication. These are not the FRAND terms the market needs

> 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]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46708678

https://blog.kagi.com/waiting-dawn-search

Which saw some discussion on HN.

Google is a monopoly across several broad categories. They're also a taxation enterprise.

Google Search took over as the URL bar for 91% of all web users across all devices.

Since this intercepts trademarks and brand names, Google gets to tax all businesses unfairly.

Tell your legislators in the US and the EU that Google shouldn't be able to sell ads against registered trademarks (+/- some edit distance). They re-engineered the web to be a taxation system for all businesses across all categories.

Searching for Claude -> Ads in first place

Searching for ChatGPT -> Ads in first place

Searching for iPhone -> Ads in first place

This is inexcusable.

Only searches for "ChatGPT versus", "iPhone reviews", or "Nintendo game comparison" should allow ads. And one could argue that the "URL Bar" shouldn't auto suggest these either when a trademark is in the URL bar.

If Google won't play fair, we have to kill 50% of their search revenue for being egregiously evil.

If you own a trademark, Google shouldn't be able to sell ads against you.

--

Google's really bad. Ideally we'd get an antitrust breakup. They're worse than Ma Bell. I wouldn't even split Google into multiple companies by division - I'd force them to be multiple copies of the same exact entity that then have to compete with each other:

Bell Systems -> {BellSouth, Bell Atlantic, Southwestern Bell, ...}

Google -> {GoogleA, GoogleB, GoogleC, ...}

They'd each have cloud, search, browser, and YouTube. But new brand names for new parent companies. That would create all-out war and lead to incredible consumer wins.

It is perhaps a clever legal workaround. They must sell access to their index, but the verdict didn't state how much of it you can buy access to at any one time. So they put a limit of 50 domains, because that accommodates everyone who's not a search engine, but effectively blocks Kagi and Ecosia, while not exactly refusing to sell to them.

But of course they managed to cut themselves a nice salary with EU funds, paid in part by me and you, so that's all that matters.

PageRank wouldn't exist without webrings, directories, and forums you could only search individually, and we thrived on that Internet.

Welcome back, ye olde Internet.

Internet isn't a global village, it's a global ghetto, and it's becoming increasingly true that the only way not to lose is not to play.

Or, is that what orgs like Perplexity are doing, but with an LLM API? Meaning that they have their own indexes, but the original q= SERP API concept is a dead end in the market?

Tone: I am asking genuine questions here, not trying to be snarky.

AMD EPYC 7543 x2 for 64 cores/128 threads

512 GB RAM

~ 90 TB of PM9A3 SSDs across 12 physical devices

Storage is not very full though. I'm probably using about a third of it at this point.

> SerpApi deceptively takes content that Google licenses from others (like images that appear in Knowledge Panels, real-time data in Search features and much more), and then resells it for a fee. In doing so, it willfully disregards the rights and directives of websites and providers whose content appears in Search.

it sounds like they are somehow suing on behalf of whoever they are licensing content from, but does that even give Google standing?

I guess I'm asking if they actually are hoping to win or just going for a "the process is the punishment"+"we have more money and lawyers than you" approach.