Yeah, I like Kagi - and I even talked to the founder about working there. It doesn't do well at questions, and doesn't have some of google's widgets (e.g. currency conversion) but it's better than duckduckgo.
But seriously, who actually needs widgets and all the other distractions?
I've used Kagi since December and I'm ready to pay $5, $10 or even $20 a month if they just continue to provide the same quality as they do today.
I mostly search at work and I come to a search engine to find things I search for, not to get suggestions for what I should search for instead, not to enjoy cute widgets and stuff.
A search engine can be as basic as it wants if it gets my results, but if results are equal obviously nice is better than ugly.
Ah! You are right. Google supports a level of indirection that Kagi does not. "100 pesos to dollars" or "100 pesos to usd". If you use the actual currency code, Kagi works.
