They optimize for overall revenue and do not cater to (revenue-wise) largely irrelevant niche audiences like HN users or tech-savvy and privacy-obsessed hackers

They optimize for overall revenue and do not cater to (revenue-wise) largely irrelevant niche audiences like HN users or tech-savvy and privacy-obsessed hackers. Perceived quality is an aspect of user retention but I'd wager that 99 % of their users don't think that Google or Bing results are getting worse for them. Google is on track to make $1BN in revenue per day, Kagi and Marginalia are literally at one millionth of that, so while Google might have them on their radar I have a hard time believing they actually care about what they do. If any incumbent manages to capture more than 1 % of the search market they might start to adapt their strategy. Kagi and Marginalia are growing within their respective niches so they can care about these "weird" users as they are at a scale where it makes a difference for them. At some point they would need to start catering to mainstream users as well though in order to keep growing.