> If beating SEO was something a company with a different algorithm could do, then it would have happened by now.
The reductio of this argument is that nothing can ever change or improve because if it was possible someone would have done it already.
More to the point, people who have used Kagi seem to speak favorably of it. A search engine you have to pay for is never going to be the mass market option, but it can have enough users to be self-sustaining and remain one of the options, and it proves it can be done.