We downrank results that have ads/tracking on them. This small adjustments vastly improves the quality of results in Kagi, and is something Google could never do (as most ads on those sites come from them).

vladquant

Bro… what of course they know what they’re doing and make the trade offs intentionally. Ads is their entire business. As long as they don’t lose too many users, revenue will go up if more ads are shown. Nothing invisible about it

topical

I'm Vlad, founder of Kagi Search and Orion Browser. AMA.

Google does have incentives to return poor search results if it means you'll view more ads. They wouldn't do this intentionally I imagine, but these things are a kind of invisible hand.

What's an example of a design choice you made that's incompatible with ads?