I’ve been using this search engine and I have to say I’m absolutely in love with it.
Search results are great, Google level even. Can’t tell you how happy I am after trying multiple privacy oriented engines and always feeling underwhelmed with them.
Have you tried it? What are your thoughts on it?
I just started paying the unlimited plan. I like the search results and the URL replacement setting. I can redirect YouTube videos to piped and Reddit to the old one so my VPN doesn’t get blocked. The lenses are also top notch.
Bit too expensive
I’ve been using it as my primary for quite a while, it’s pretty awesome and the development pace is pretty good.
I’m not really a fan of the lead guy, some of the comments he’s made on the forums are less than great, but the product is top notch.
Care to elaborate on the comments? I haven’t read any of them.
Some interesting moderation choices that suggest a lack of support for the LGTBQ+ community, a business partnership with Brave, and a really shitty take refusing to add help numbers for self-harm related searches.
You can get the cliff notes of it from this post and comment to it: https://lemm.ee/comment/8016834
This made me sad. I actually thought I found the search engine I was looking for and now I get this shit.
For context: They edited their anwser and said the old one was bad. https://kagifeedback.org/d/2808-reconsider-your-partnership-with-brave
I would argue that the new answer is still bad.
The search results were top notch before adding Brave, indicating to me that they aren’t really needed.
“People complain about all of them” is probably a factual statement, which is why evaluating each source independently is valuable. I don’t think it justifies completely dismissing criticism.
It is indeed disappointing.
I know what you are referring to with regards to the LGBTQ+ matter, but the only source is the user who reported it (with a screenshot that did not show anything), the same user who used some completely dishonest and bad faith arguments* to slander the CEO guy. I wouldn’t take that at face value and I have absolutely no problem to see, instead, a reason to moderate their comments.
* the CEO of kagi has a website with a “best country ranking”, which is just a stupid page with 15 criterias chosen to rank which country is the greatest. The argument was that the guy must be a racist/white suprematist because the top countries for the most part were white (and wealthy. Duh). Apparently they were especially pissed about the fact that he decided to include the Olympic medals pro capite, despite the fact that it’s one of the few metrics in which first world countries were not at the top.
with a screenshot that did not show anything
the screenshot shows a thread on Kagi’s Discord that’s been deleted almost immediately after that screenshot has been taken, while other user’s calls to “stop shoving LGBTQ down our throats” have been left up.
The screenshot shows an off-topic comment that complains about other comments being “left up”, and the CEO that answers that nothing has been deleted, in fact (I suppose in regards to the topic). The thread in the screenshot was (going to be) deleted because it’s off-topic, it’s a meta-conversation that doesn’t add anything to the general discussion, if not noise and chaos (and tbh, following long conversation in discord is already terrible as it is).
I guess it’s the word of two different people in that Mastodon thread vs the word of the guy who moved all discussion to his personal Discord server to begin with.
The second person (I think) referred to the thread in the screenshot when they said “I saw it disappearing live”. I have no problems believing that the guy deleted that thread, it’s an off-topic thread. What I have problem to believe is that the guy specifically deleted comments from queer folks (which is the point of this post). And again, the person who started the Mastodon thread is someone that - in my view - has no credibility at all, considering the completely dishonest way in which they carried out the conversation.
Not sure what the screenshot you posted is supposed to prove. He closed a thread on the kagifeedback site asking to move the discussion (if needed) in Kagi Discord, where - in fact - happened (although with very little benefit for anybody). AFAIK it’s not “his personal Discord” server, it’s Kagi’s server, and I believe most of the conversation (including the one in the “incriminating” screenshot) happened in
#general
. I am really not sure what your point is.Either way, it doesn’t matter what I believe. What I know is that the person making the Mastodon thread is someone in bad faith and with (in my opinion) completely bad takes. Someone who makes such a post, in my opinion is a moron.
It’s interesting that in your previous month-old comment you mentioned “a paraphrased and reinterpreted (in bad faith) piece of a comment” from the CEO, which confused me, because the Mastodon thread also includes the content of a comment the CEO tried to scrub.
But you did write this gem:
Now, since my mother tongue has the unfortunate responsibility for having coined the term “fascism”, I think I have at least an idea of what it means.
…appeal to ethnicity is pretty funny
We are talking about the same thread, right?
https://nyan.lol/@zicklepop/111716010186646210
This one.
There is no comment that the “CEO tried to scrub”. There is only a discord screenshot of a meta-conversation about the fact that the user claimed their comment was deleted, and the CEO answers that nothing was deleted to avoid this very same accusation, and then says he will delete this (the meta) thread (because it’s off-topic).
Not sure what you find funny though, however,
a paraphrased and reinterpreted (in bad faith) piece of a comment
referred to:
and his response is basically that inclusivity is why there is no innovation in tech anymore. i think he wants to get acquired by 37signals.
Which is completely arbitrary. Even wanting to read the comment of the CEO with malice, he said “politics”.
…appeal to ethnicity is pretty funny
This has nothing to do with ethnicity, it has to do with words and meaning. Calling someone a fascist for such matter is completely bananas and - frankly - disrespectful towards the people who died fighting the actual fascism. The CEO can be an idiot, or a tech bro, but he expressed his views and let others express theirs. This is pretty evident from their forum.
We are talking about the same thread, right?
Oops. I was looking a few comments up in this very Lemmy thread, somebody linked to this other Lemmy thread.
I do think it is super important to discuss whether a tech bro is just making a quick cash grab product in order to get bought out by a larger corporation, though. As seen with the Skiff tech bros.
Yeah, that thread linked (https://lemm.ee/comment/8016834) references the same Mastodon thread. I know because I followed all of this few months back.
I do think it is super important to discuss whether a tech bro is just making a quick cash grab product in order to get bought out by a larger corporation, though. As seen with the Skiff tech bros.
Oh yeah, this is definitely interesting, but…while email is somewhat binding as a service, a search engine is not. Give me 2 minutes and I have changed the default search engine on all my devices away from Kagi. If that will be the case (despite the fact that so far, I have no reason to think it is the case), it will be super easy to move away. I think if I were a Skiff customer without a custom domain, I would still be crying instead.
That is not what Ethnicity is.
“ a lack of support for the LGTBQ+ community,”
Are you saying that the GUI doesn’t have a setting for rainbow coloured buttons?
Edit: fucks sake people, lighten up. I’m an ally.
then maybe you should realise that the LGBTQ folks have seen too many serious remarks similar to yours to consider them funny.
Oh fuck off.
10/10, great allyship. remember to also make some kitchen jokes, and then act offended and keep repeating that you’re a feminist when women call you out on it!
op provided a link. maybe you should click it?
The link just goes to a comment that links to a screenshot of Discord where someone complains vaguely about moderation to the CEO. I wouldn’t exactly call that evidence. More harboring a personal grudge
I think the fact the CEO only wants to handle criticism in a private, controlled Discord server already says a lot about how the conversation is going.
Wow, some people need to lighten up. I’m an ally. It was a joke based on the word ‘support’ and the subject of software. Fucks sake.
I’m not a fan of them doing business with Brave and [how they handled criticism from the community] (https://programming.dev/post/8285794).
For context: They edited their anwser and said the old one was bad. https://kagifeedback.org/d/2808-reconsider-your-partnership-with-brave
IMO the previous link provides better context, as it provides a look into what the leadership said within that thread before trying to clean up their optics, as well as showing other examples of what the company was up to.
The original behavior, and the censorship on Kagi-run discussion platforms is quite telling.
I’ve had better results than on Google in many cases. Also leaves DDG and other privacy relevant alternatives in the dust.
But, unless you are a power user it’s hard to justify the cost. Very pricey.
The starter tier is only $5/month for 300 searches, which is more than enough for your average user.
I can get not wanting to pay for search, but I wouldn’t call $5 “very pricey”. In fact, I’d be so bold as to call it reasonable.
I have 2000 searches in the past 7 days… 300 searches a month seems so miniscule
I just checked my history and performed 611 searches this week on this device alone. 300 is not even close to enough for a week. $5 is way too expensive for that.
Maybe I am not average but I blow past 300 pretty easily. I also think you may underestimating how much people search on their phones.
Same here. I tried on the starter plan but had to upgrade. According to my account I have made 802 searches since January 4th. So 17.4 searches a day on average. This means that for a 31 day month I am looking at 620 searches.
I am also a heavy user of bookmarks and browser history. So I don’t rely on search to open specific sites (like searching for “facebook” which is one of Google’s most popular queries). So someone who is in the habit of using search for direct navigation is probably going to be a good chunk higher.
That being said I work on the computer and do a fair number of searches for my job. So I can believe that a light user is pretty comfortable at 300 searches a month. But moderate searches or people who use the search engine for navigation will need the unlimited plan.
I just checked and performed more than 300 search queries in the past 4 days.
I use the family plan with my wife. So we end up at $7 per month per user. Which IMO is ok. Given how important search is for our every day internet usage, I can accept this price.
I rarely have to jump to the second page of the search results to get what I want, so I am really happy with Kagi.
I have been using it since September and enjoy it. (Paid with crypto of course)
Didn’t know they accept crypto payments, that’s cool
They accept bitcoin, but i paid it with my monero via a swap service. Though the ought to accept monero directly.
It’s not open source, at least to my knowledge.
No it is not. They are “increasingly open source”, whatever that truly means.
It means absolutely nothing
It means that they are open sourcing an increasing number of components? In the very same page they are linked: browser extensions, libraries they use for their AI features.
That’s the problem, though, given the cost of indexing it. I’m not sure there’s a single open source search engine that doesn’t rely on some sort of proprietary software. My philosophy is that if the product is free, you likely are the product.? We would almost need a donation-based search engine to get around that, which would likely would not be sustainable.
I was introduced to it by an IRL friend of mine very early on and was very sceptical. I then tried it many months later and what actually convinced me most are its “advanced” features. They’re features that should obviously be in any search engine but since there’s been practically 0 innovation in this space in the past decade or so, this is very refreshing.
The results being on par with Google at the worst also helps.
Pretty much everything about it is really great. The only thing that’s not great is that you’re required to identify yourself with every search. I’m not aware of any alternative for a paid search engine though. They claim to not log or otherwise abuse your PII and it’s believable but there’s still a risk.
I guess the price is also kinda high but it’s justified AFAICT.Btw: !kagi@lemmy.ml.
I think it’s great. It’s the only search engine where I don’t find myself going back the Google every now and then. I’d say the results are actually a lot better than what Google offers. Being able to rank websites higher or lower (or even pin them or block them entirely) is great, and as it’s saved to your account, it’s basically synced across devices.
It’s $10/month for unlimited searches. I tried their limited $5 plan first, but found myself thinking “do I really need to search this?” way too often to try and stay under the 200 (back then I think, now it’s 300) search limit.
Their privacy model is mostly based on you trusting them that they don’t keep your search history for longer or any other purposes than stated (if turned on), but their business model is clearly based on subscriptions, so it should be fine unless they get greedy.
You can not enable the “feature” to keep search history. The slider stays disabled when you try.
True, it’s even disabled by default. But you still have to trust them that they really don’t store your history.
How is map searching/integration?
It’s Apple maps. It works but it’s not great.
I created an account a few months ago but I’ve barely used it. DDG provides pretty much everything I search for. This might be because I don’t typically do very “esoteric” searches, but for now I don’t see the need for a paid service. Most of the times, tweaking the query so that it looks for a specific source is good enough.
I’d love if DDG had a system to remove entire domains entirely from the results, though.
Personally I love it. Being able to boost results from some sites while depriotizing or even banning others has been real helpful. Not having unrelated “sponsored” content cluttering up the results is certainly nice as well. The results themselves feel like Google from ten years ago, relevant and on point.
It’s ridiculously expensive. It’s not private if you have to link your searches to a paid account and none of those payment providers are private. They don’t seem to have open sourced any of their key functionality, meaning you have to trust them to not be collecting your activity data.
I spent a long time getting rid of software and using services that I either no longer trusted or was unable to make an informed choice due to their lack of open source code and I’m not going to take a retrograde step now. And that’s without the issue with their choice (a continued choice I believe) to use Brave results, a company I’m personally not prepared to support.
If they don’t cache your search history to your identity, which they claim they don’t, then I’m not sure why that’s a problem.
Because claiming they don’t is not the same as being able to verify they don’t by making their code open source.
You can never verify what’s really running on their servers, even if they privided source code.
Deciding to trust a provider - any provider - isn’t just any one thing. So, the most basic step to me is all the relevant code being open source. The next step is getting their infrastructure audited. The step after that is seeing what happens if they get court ordered to provide data.
They do none of that and I’m just too cynical to accept ‘trust me bro’ as a convincing sales tactic.
That’s a security audit, looking at its vulnerability to attack.
They had a security audit, they have a canary on their website, they have a privacy policy which is legally binding, and they have a business incentive.
If you so much suspect that they do collect searches and associate them with accounts (something which they claim they don’t do), you can make a report to the relevant data protection authority, which then can audit them.
As someone else also commented, you can use an alias email and pay in crypto if you really wish to not associate your account with your searches. Just be advised that between IP addresses and browser fingerprinting it might always be possible to associate your searches together (even if not to you as an individual with name and surname), and this is something that big CDNs like cloudflare or imperva also provide for you. So you still rely in most cases on what the company says and what their business model is to determine whether you trust them or not.
So far kagi has both a good policy (great policy actually) and a business model that doesn’t suggest any interest for them to illegally collect data to sell them.
I don’t suspect or accuse them of anything. Quite the reverse - what I’m saying is that without things like open source code, privacy audits etc, we’re being asked to take their word for it all. They might well be the most privacy respecting company ever and they equally might not be. If you’re happy to take their word for it, that’s entirely your call. I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind, I’m just answering OP’s question with my own opinion.
And I am saying that there are tools to increase this trust.
I also want to stress that you have no tools really to verify. Open source code is useless, audits are also partially useless. I have done audits myself (as the tech contact for the audited party) and the reality is that they are extremely easy to game and anyway are just point in time snapshots. There is nothing that impedes the company tomorrow to deploy a change that invalidates what was audited. The biggest tools we have are legal protection (I mean, most companies that collect all kind of data disclose that they do nowadays) and economic incentive. Kagi seems to provide good reason to trust them from both these angles.
Obviously, if that’s not enough for you, fair enough, but if you are considering a company to be intentionally malicious or deceptive, then even the guarantees you suggest do not guarantee anything, so at this point I really wonder if or how you trust anybody, starting from your ISP, your DNS provider, your browser etc.
Current Kagi user paying for it privately. They offer top ups to your account with crypto. I do xmr -> btc to top up my account. Also signed up with an alias email.
Do they have an android app? I haven’t been able to find anything that looks trustworthy
I’ve used Quick Search since 2013. Simple, configurable.
Back then I had it tied to the search button (which no longer exists ☹️)
I just added the search engine to my browser. I don’t see the need for an app when all of the results are going to open in the browser anyways.
I love it. Personally I don’t think it is too expensive, though I am probably a power user of search engines, as I need it a lot while programming all sorts of stuff… So maybe it is just me saying its worth the money, because I use it a lot
To me 100$/y seems a little much compared to Proton Unlimited and the amount of features there. Perhaps it’s like that due to their size and AI features
Running a search engine is just a lot more expensive than running a VPN and email service. The amount of data and processing power needed to have a useful search index is just so much higher