13 ms·

A more intriguing fact is that Google's search result page will often run 2-2.5MB in size (!). And sub 500ms results are a thing of (distant) past. More often t

A more intriguing fact is that Google's search result page will often run 2-2.5MB in size (!). And sub 500ms results are a thing of (distant) past. More often than comfortable, user will wait between 1.5s and 2 seconds for results to load. [1] This has gotten out of the hand for a company with so much resources, that literally depends on page speed for revenue. It is incomprehensible that the size (which is probably the main reason for latency) can not be reduced. At Kagi Search [2] (I'm founder) our home page (for logged in users, not the marketing landing page) is mere 68kb, everything works even without javascript, and 90th percentile result pages load in <1s with SERP page being on average 100-200kb total. [1] https://pagespeed.web.dev/report?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dmattress https://pagespeed.web.dev/report?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.googl... [2] https://kagi.com https://kagi.com

ddtaylor 5y ago
> that literally depends on page speed for revenue. I don't think that's an accurate view of the business model of Google. For them consumers are mostly locked in and their business model is in tracking users and mining as much information as possible from every facet of the experience.
google234123 5y ago
Just did a search and it took 550ms. 1.5s and 2 seconds sounds like an exaggeration
ec109685 5y ago
Don’t you think they have run tests that trade off search speed for additional features and determined the features increase engagement / revenue? There is a lot more going on than 10 blue links these days, including continual scroll on mobile. Perf versus features is always a matter of trade offs.
- freediver 5y ago
  I suppose you are right. I can only guess that RPU is the primary KPI and somehow more scripts allow for more revenue extraction even if the performance is lower.
  - thedudeabides5 5y ago
    Or maybe just give it away to ppl and see if they like using it to find stuff? Where did the love go....
  - PragmaticPulp 5y ago
    I think you’re overthinking this. You’re looking at cold start download sizes, but that’s not what people actual see after everything is cached follow the first load. Google pages load plenty fast on every device I’ve used recently, including some very old android tablets. Most page loads don’t transfer much data at all due to caching. Combined with the high speeds of both browsers and devices today, there wouldn’t be much real change in a highly stripped down Google page relative to what they’re serving up today.
    - freediver 5y ago
      But it is not just a cold start problem. Check your network tab on a "warm" search. Here is what I get: https://imgur.com/a/Dl2B5Zo https://imgur.com/a/Dl2B5Zo 2 seconds to load and 1.12MB transferred, all on "warm" start.
      - PragmaticPulp 5y ago
        Using Chrome Dev Tools I'm seeing around 150-200KB actually transferred on each search page result (2MB resources, though most are cached). I'm also seeing content loaded happen in under 1 second.
      - marricks 5y ago
        And the top half of the results is all ads! I don’t know how people stand Google.
      - pfooti 5y ago
        Can't tell from your UI screenshot, but quite often loading a page with devtools open will disable the cache. I forget if this is the default behavior or not.
- ocdtrekkie 5y ago
  I am sure that is the case, but I am not sure it is good for the user: Google ads a lot of ads and behavior tracking that probably is for their benefit, not yours.
- fartcannon 5y ago
  I think its more that they have a monopoly on search in the current zeitgeist. So no, I don't think they've done that, and if they did, there's no pressure for them to optimise for speed, so they'd optimize for something bloated that helps someone get a promotion. This is why, for example, everything Microsoft Office does is a bloated trash fire, and how Apple gets away with telling a whole generation of phone purchasers that they were holding it wrong.
  - ec109685 5y ago
    Even with a monopoly, they make more money the more often it’s used.
  - slap_shot 5y ago
    > and how Apple gets away with telling a whole generation of phone purchasers that they were holding it wrong. Okay. I'll bite. What does this mean? I hold my iPhone 13 the exact same way I held a Nokia brick in 2003. What did Apple tell us?
    - fartcannon 5y ago
      iPhone 4 had a bad antennae design. Jobs blamed the users. It was hilarious.
      - slap_shot 5y ago
        :facepalm: of course!
    - jodrellblank 5y ago
      11 years ago, if your finger bridged the two antennae together on an iPhone 4, you lost signal strength. Half a percent of iPhone users complained about it, Apple offered a free cover to anyone affected. They were HIT WITH 18 LAWSUITS about it OMG. They settled all the lawsuits by ... offering a free cover or $15 refund.[1] Depending on your viewpoint this is either one of many blips along the way of manufacturing tens of billions of products over a dozen generations, or a way for "mactards [to] realize Steve Jobs are out to milk their clueless a$$es with his oh so clever marketing gimmicks" (Yahoo News comment). Bonus points if you can find anywhere Apple said "you're holding it wrong" or blamed users. Steve Jobs wrote "Just avoid holding it (the iPhone] in that way." which is somewhat pragmatic, and rather what you'd expect someone to say if they weren't filtered by a PR firm. Probably what I would say. Apple haters can't face this. Macworld.co.uk said: > "We don't really think there was anything substantial to the problem, and the iPhone 4 sold tremendously well. Customers didn't seem to notice, let alone mind, and Apple repeatedly pointed out that other mobile phones suffered the same effect." [1] https://www.cnet.com/news/settlement-reached-in-iphone-4-antennagate-suit/ https://www.cnet.com/news/settlement-reached-in-iphone-4-ant... [2] https://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/antennagate-11-biggest-apple-scandals-3620624/ https://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/antennagate-11-biggest-ap...
- influx 5y ago
  Gmail has a fucking loading screen now. Have I switched? Not yet, but the reason I switched to gmail in the first place was for the minimal, fast interface.
  - bawolff 5y ago
    Gmail was the original heavy webmail interface. All its competitors at the time were basic html (and providing only 5mb of space). Heavy js to provide a smooth interface was what made gmail such a big deal other than high storage limits.
  - dchest 5y ago
    Gmail always had a loading screen.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  > determined the features increase engagement / revenue? This. Nothing else matters.
cookiengineer 5y ago
Honestly, if I have to be logged in by default on a search page I'm not gonna use it. Assuming that people don't clear their cookies is wrong nowadays. Even when your website is a little snowflake, the rest of the web isn't. I honestly would recommend a Web Extension that adds your search as a search provider, or something like an Open Search Description. Also: the landing page of GitHub annoys the shit out of me. Every damn time. I don't wanna register with three clicks if I already have an account. Make a landing page easier for regular users to login, and prioritize login over signups...otherwise those regular users won't be happy. Any company should focus on keeping the regular users happy (UX wise) and not focus on one time trial registrations that will be a burden on infrastructure.
- dangus 5y ago
  I don't even mind logging in, but it does seem weird to force it before letting potential customers interact with the product. Why not just prompt for registration when personalization features are used? What I do mind is the price...if you read the FAQ, they want to charge as low as $10/month, $30/month for families once it exits beta. ("As low as" means "possibly higher") That's very high. The family price equates to 16 Office 365 Family seats, which includes 16TB of cloud storage. In my opinion, the price for this kind of product should be more in the realm of $50/year. I'm thinking a price closer to what password managers charge. This price also will need to be adjusted for global customers if that is the eventual intention. Spotify in India costs less than $1.50 a month.
  - burrows 5y ago
    - dangus 5y ago
      That's $130,000 in 30 years if invested at a 6% annual return, compounded daily. In other words, shave off a year of your career at least and retire instead.
      - 5y ago
YetAnotherNick 5y ago
> Google's search result page will often run 2-2.5MB in size While it is true, for almost all of the users most of it is cached. For me it is using 2.5 MB resources with 77kB transferred.
- onion2k 5y ago
  That's important of course, but the cached code will have to be refreshed when there's a change (could be done partially with code splitting), so how long the cached data lasts depends on how often the Search page is updated. For Google that probably isn't happening daily, but it could be very often. Hopefully Google have split out the hot code that changes a lot in to a small bundle so the rest can sit in the cache for a while.
  - jamil7 5y ago
    That cached code (presumably) needs to be executed by your computer so it’s still wasteful, slower and somewhat mind boggling as to why that pages needs 2.5mb worth of html/css/js.
asdffdsa 5y ago
At least Google gets you a search page, rather than a sign-up prompt.
c54 5y ago
I was enjoying trying out kagi but it served me a page to the effect of "you exceeded your number of searches" and that immediately turned me off of the product. Will that limitation be lifted at some point? My other feature request is that I still like google maps, and OSM is just not a good replacement. The important feature for me here is: google a place name, click the map square that shows up in the Answer for that place to open it in gmaps. Both kagi and brave search use OSM which is not clickable, this really breaks my UX and alone is enough to make me want to go back to google search. Using !m sometimes seems to work but I think ideal would be a "which maps provider would you like" feature which just lets a user choose.
- freediver 5y ago
  Yep sorry for that. We introduced query limit to prevent abuse and control cost during (free) beta but initially set it very low for our target userbase (50 queries/day). We increased it since to 200/day after receiving similar feedback and of course once we launch there will be no limit. Kagi Maps is still work in progress (beta like everything else) and we just didn't get to shipping this feature. We are not using OSM only though, and many users have complimented the map to be better than Google maps already (for features that we have shipped).
svnpenn 5y ago
Please don't spam your paid walled garden.
Semaphor 5y ago
I registered for the beta, I must say I have low expectations, but I'm ready to be positively surprised ;)
rym_ 5y ago
how can you search 'with privacy' / anonymously if it is tied to an account.
- freediver 5y ago
  Privacy and anonymity are not the same. We do not claim anonymity although if you read our privacy policy you will see that it is very close to it (as we do not log searches at all, so it it not possible to tie them to a user).
Keyframe 5y ago
literally depends on page speed for revenue. Turns out, this might not be true at all.
lewantmontreal 5y ago
Looks really nice. If I had any suggestions it would be to use a different search for each example, now Magic the gathering is used twice. I can imagine potential customers will love to see what the final product looks like before purchasing. Best of luck, looks really ambitious!
fomine3 5y ago
I don't care much page speed when I want to search some deep information. Sadly Google getting significantly worse for indexing.
xbmcuser 5y ago
Unless you are using an ad blocker or have disabled it in the settings chrome precaches so for the majority of the people there probably is no 1.5-2 second load time. But I expect majority of the people browsing hacker news would have it disabled so would have the slower loadtime
charcircuit 5y ago
Google isn't as bad as you are saying. Doing a search of "test" the result page is about 130 KiB. This is an order of magnitude smaller than what you claim. It also loads in between 900ms and 1 second the majority of the time.
mro_name 5y ago
> a company with so much resources That is the problem: resources show up in abundance, not in scarcity. Only small or poor creators usually can do the latter. Conways law at work, I guess.
skinkestek 5y ago
I've tried Kagi the last two or three weeks and the page speed is a nice bonus but the real advantage it has over DDG and Google is that it does find the pages I look for, rank them reasonably well and doesn't mix in pages that doesn't contain my search terms. It is just like being back in 2007 or something when Google worked this way and it is wonderful. I've used DDG for the past few years and I still hope they too will succeed, but with DDG the quality is the same or (slightly) lower than Google and the bang operator comes in handy many times a week. With Kagi I only think I have used the bang operator once (yes, they have it). It is that good: when I look at the results I know immediately that there is no way Google or DDG can do it better except by pure luck and also my results are already there on first or second try so why bother shopping around? Bonuses: - bangs work like in DDG (I think, I don't use them anymore) - doublequotes actually work unlike in Google and DDG - even without doublequotes it doesn't stray very far from my query - I can add lenses (?) or something (I have not bothered yet, the defaults are good enough) Yep, I'm a walking billboard now, but I'm not paid in anyway and don't know any of the people behind kagi, it just happens to be the biggest improvement I have seen since Google replaced everything else sometime around twenty years ago. Edit: yes, it is a paid product but it is free during beta and so good that I would consider Kagi gift cards for friends in tech if it was paid, just like I'd consider gifting WhatsApp subscriptions before Facebook bought and subverted it (yes, I was considering worse words). Edit 2: I'll do this for your product too if I love it. I did for WhatsApp and Google+ and in real life for the insurance company I have used the last few years.
- annadane 5y ago
  > - doublequotes actually work unlike in Google and DDG This drives me nuts. If you're going to have a competitor to Google (ddg) at least give me proper functionality to refine my searches
  - skinkestek 5y ago
    Yep! How this passes QA is and why everyone else who knew old Google isn't crying out loudly is beyond my understanding.
- 5y ago
danvayn 5y ago
I'd give your project a shot but the signup funnel for your beta is a little funny -- you should let people choose to leave the textbox-based questions blank and still get an invite. If you just made those parts drop-downs with the most popular answers and had an 'Other' option that makes a text-field option, you would probably get much more valuable data and more of it. I would not be surprised if you had some amount of dropoff in your beta signup funnel due to questions that make potential users feel like theyre being 'put on the spot'
buro9 5y ago
I can't try kagi before signing up. I'm not sure that I want to sign up and give you data when your premise is to not mine the data. Is that your premise? How long do you retain knowledge of what had been searched? The personalise features put me off. The level of personalisation I want is course location... I.e. online shops in my country, or if I search for something in Liverpool pick the right Liverpool in the world... Both of these are relative to where I am and an IP geo lookup is roughly good enough with an override in the worst case. I'm not sure precisely what your differentiation is (again, can't find it without signing up)... But I want to be very sure before I sign up to anything that you treat user data as a radioactive resource. Thankfully given that GDPR exists and everything done on search is related to a user profile I'm assuming that you're petrified of storing and using data... But I don't know as the site didn't reassure on that front and I didn't see the privacy policy at the foot of the home page. I want to like what you're doing so much... But you've designed it to have friction to that discovery.
- ralferoo 5y ago
  > I'm not sure precisely what your differentiation is (again, can't find it without signing up)... I'd echo this. I actually even went to the site to see what was so good about your search, then realised I can't even test with a single query without signing up, and lost interest.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- freediver 5y ago
  > I can't try kagi before signing up. Perhaps it is not obvious that Kagi has not launched yet. We are in closed beta, and email is used to invite people who want to be beta testers, nothing else. Once we officially launch, everyone will have the ability to try it. >I'm not sure precisely what your differentiation is (again, can't find it without signing up). The FAQ has a lot of information you may find useful https://kagi.com/faq https://kagi.com/faq
_8j50 5y ago
I hope you won't be requiring logins in the future. Big deal breaker for me.
stavros 5y ago
Kagi looks interesting, can I have an invite?
no_time 5y ago
Interesting business but I can't help but be a bit worried. You promise not to monetize usage data and such but as a paid search engine, you are in the perfect position to do so. Even more so than Google or DDG since neither of those have my name and other PII. You would have my payment information AND valuable insight into my interests.
- freediver 5y ago
  Yes, and zero incentives to misuse that information, as the entire business literally depends on the trust between us and the user, and is entirely supported by user subscriptions. Incentives are perfectly aligned too - we have to constantly keep improving the product or you will jump to a (free) alternative.
  - no_time 5y ago
    I admit I might be more paranoid than the average person. This could work if we knew each other IRL or something like that but as it stands what you said is a nicely worded version of "Source: dude trust me." Accepting crypto payments could be a solution but I'd totally get why'd you want to avoid that.
    - freediver 5y ago
      There is nothing else we can possibly tangibly offer, and you are right to have high standards. Note that also we never say a version of "dude trust me", but lay down the facts how the business operates, what the vision is and why are we doing it. The best we can do really is have a business model that aligns incentives with the users and weirdly enough, this is already an innovation in this market. Then, create the best possible product that users will love. Gaining trust is a process that can not be skipped.
kypro 5y ago
That's a lovely landing page and a nice domain you have there. I really like the idea of a premium search engine too, I'll give it a go for sure. I'm a little uncomfortable with having to be logged in though... Ideally if I'm going to pay for a search engine I would like to do that as anonymously as possible. Best of luck with the project, I'd love to see some competition in search again. Google has been getting worse for years and they have no real incentive to improve given their dominance and lack of disruption in the space.
equivocates 5y ago
Don’t really want to login to search.
impetus1 5y ago
When i code in python or react, I get proud of my 900kb spa web pages. I respect your site so much in fact, I would like to apply to work at your company. Where do I apply?
executive 5y ago
> 100% free of ads and tracking. > forces you to login
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y ago
I looked at it, and I'm uncomfortable with the fact I have to be logged in, so you know all my search results, know my exact identity (through the credit card) and can analyze them and store forever (you can say you don't do that, but you cannot prove it). At least with Google I can delete cookies, disable fingerprinting and use a VPN, and hope they don't have my search history. Furthermore, you are in US jurisdiction, so the government can request access to your data and you can never tell anybody about that. What about a version of that where I pay a few cents for each search, using Lightning Network, for example?
charwalker 5y ago
I don't see how your paid service is any different from Google beyond interface and lack of ability to use it for free/no signup to compare. Or I can use duckduckgo without needing to sign up and get your promised security with 1-2 second searches for free. Maybe you'll have enough takers to get off the ground but I'll rely on other tools.

ddtaylor 5y ago

> that literally depends on page speed for revenue. I don't think that's an accurate view of the business model of Google. For them consumers are mostly locked in and their business model is in tracking users and mining as much information as possible from every facet of the experience.

google234123 5y ago

Just did a search and it took 550ms. 1.5s and 2 seconds sounds like an exaggeration

ec109685 5y ago

Don’t you think they have run tests that trade off search speed for additional features and determined the features increase engagement / revenue? There is a lot more going on than 10 blue links these days, including continual scroll on mobile. Perf versus features is always a matter of trade offs.

freediver 5y ago
I suppose you are right. I can only guess that RPU is the primary KPI and somehow more scripts allow for more revenue extraction even if the performance is lower.
- thedudeabides5 5y ago
  Or maybe just give it away to ppl and see if they like using it to find stuff? Where did the love go....
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  I think you’re overthinking this. You’re looking at cold start download sizes, but that’s not what people actual see after everything is cached follow the first load. Google pages load plenty fast on every device I’ve used recently, including some very old android tablets. Most page loads don’t transfer much data at all due to caching. Combined with the high speeds of both browsers and devices today, there wouldn’t be much real change in a highly stripped down Google page relative to what they’re serving up today.
  - freediver 5y ago
    But it is not just a cold start problem. Check your network tab on a "warm" search. Here is what I get: https://imgur.com/a/Dl2B5Zo https://imgur.com/a/Dl2B5Zo 2 seconds to load and 1.12MB transferred, all on "warm" start.
    - PragmaticPulp 5y ago
      Using Chrome Dev Tools I'm seeing around 150-200KB actually transferred on each search page result (2MB resources, though most are cached). I'm also seeing content loaded happen in under 1 second.
    - marricks 5y ago
      And the top half of the results is all ads! I don’t know how people stand Google.
    - pfooti 5y ago
      Can't tell from your UI screenshot, but quite often loading a page with devtools open will disable the cache. I forget if this is the default behavior or not.
ocdtrekkie 5y ago
I am sure that is the case, but I am not sure it is good for the user: Google ads a lot of ads and behavior tracking that probably is for their benefit, not yours.
fartcannon 5y ago
I think its more that they have a monopoly on search in the current zeitgeist. So no, I don't think they've done that, and if they did, there's no pressure for them to optimise for speed, so they'd optimize for something bloated that helps someone get a promotion. This is why, for example, everything Microsoft Office does is a bloated trash fire, and how Apple gets away with telling a whole generation of phone purchasers that they were holding it wrong.
- ec109685 5y ago
  Even with a monopoly, they make more money the more often it’s used.
- slap_shot 5y ago
  > and how Apple gets away with telling a whole generation of phone purchasers that they were holding it wrong. Okay. I'll bite. What does this mean? I hold my iPhone 13 the exact same way I held a Nokia brick in 2003. What did Apple tell us?
  - fartcannon 5y ago
    iPhone 4 had a bad antennae design. Jobs blamed the users. It was hilarious.
    - slap_shot 5y ago
      :facepalm: of course!
  - jodrellblank 5y ago
    11 years ago, if your finger bridged the two antennae together on an iPhone 4, you lost signal strength. Half a percent of iPhone users complained about it, Apple offered a free cover to anyone affected. They were HIT WITH 18 LAWSUITS about it OMG. They settled all the lawsuits by ... offering a free cover or $15 refund.[1] Depending on your viewpoint this is either one of many blips along the way of manufacturing tens of billions of products over a dozen generations, or a way for "mactards [to] realize Steve Jobs are out to milk their clueless a$$es with his oh so clever marketing gimmicks" (Yahoo News comment). Bonus points if you can find anywhere Apple said "you're holding it wrong" or blamed users. Steve Jobs wrote "Just avoid holding it (the iPhone] in that way." which is somewhat pragmatic, and rather what you'd expect someone to say if they weren't filtered by a PR firm. Probably what I would say. Apple haters can't face this. Macworld.co.uk said: > "We don't really think there was anything substantial to the problem, and the iPhone 4 sold tremendously well. Customers didn't seem to notice, let alone mind, and Apple repeatedly pointed out that other mobile phones suffered the same effect." [1] https://www.cnet.com/news/settlement-reached-in-iphone-4-antennagate-suit/ https://www.cnet.com/news/settlement-reached-in-iphone-4-ant... [2] https://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/antennagate-11-biggest-apple-scandals-3620624/ https://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/antennagate-11-biggest-ap...
influx 5y ago
Gmail has a fucking loading screen now. Have I switched? Not yet, but the reason I switched to gmail in the first place was for the minimal, fast interface.
- bawolff 5y ago
  Gmail was the original heavy webmail interface. All its competitors at the time were basic html (and providing only 5mb of space). Heavy js to provide a smooth interface was what made gmail such a big deal other than high storage limits.
- dchest 5y ago
  Gmail always had a loading screen.
dmitriid 5y ago
> determined the features increase engagement / revenue? This. Nothing else matters.

cookiengineer 5y ago

Honestly, if I have to be logged in by default on a search page I'm not gonna use it. Assuming that people don't clear their cookies is wrong nowadays. Even when your website is a little snowflake, the rest of the web isn't. I honestly would recommend a Web Extension that adds your search as a search provider, or something like an Open Search Description. Also: the landing page of GitHub annoys the shit out of me. Every damn time. I don't wanna register with three clicks if I already have an account. Make a landing page easier for regular users to login, and prioritize login over signups...otherwise those regular users won't be happy. Any company should focus on keeping the regular users happy (UX wise) and not focus on one time trial registrations that will be a burden on infrastructure.

dangus 5y ago
I don't even mind logging in, but it does seem weird to force it before letting potential customers interact with the product. Why not just prompt for registration when personalization features are used? What I do mind is the price...if you read the FAQ, they want to charge as low as $10/month, $30/month for families once it exits beta. ("As low as" means "possibly higher") That's very high. The family price equates to 16 Office 365 Family seats, which includes 16TB of cloud storage. In my opinion, the price for this kind of product should be more in the realm of $50/year. I'm thinking a price closer to what password managers charge. This price also will need to be adjusted for global customers if that is the eventual intention. Spotify in India costs less than $1.50 a month.
- burrows 5y ago
  - dangus 5y ago
    That's $130,000 in 30 years if invested at a 6% annual return, compounded daily. In other words, shave off a year of your career at least and retire instead.
    - 5y ago

YetAnotherNick 5y ago

> Google's search result page will often run 2-2.5MB in size While it is true, for almost all of the users most of it is cached. For me it is using 2.5 MB resources with 77kB transferred.

onion2k 5y ago
That's important of course, but the cached code will have to be refreshed when there's a change (could be done partially with code splitting), so how long the cached data lasts depends on how often the Search page is updated. For Google that probably isn't happening daily, but it could be very often. Hopefully Google have split out the hot code that changes a lot in to a small bundle so the rest can sit in the cache for a while.
- jamil7 5y ago
  That cached code (presumably) needs to be executed by your computer so it’s still wasteful, slower and somewhat mind boggling as to why that pages needs 2.5mb worth of html/css/js.

asdffdsa 5y ago

At least Google gets you a search page, rather than a sign-up prompt.

c54 5y ago

I was enjoying trying out kagi but it served me a page to the effect of "you exceeded your number of searches" and that immediately turned me off of the product. Will that limitation be lifted at some point? My other feature request is that I still like google maps, and OSM is just not a good replacement. The important feature for me here is: google a place name, click the map square that shows up in the Answer for that place to open it in gmaps. Both kagi and brave search use OSM which is not clickable, this really breaks my UX and alone is enough to make me want to go back to google search. Using !m sometimes seems to work but I think ideal would be a "which maps provider would you like" feature which just lets a user choose.

freediver 5y ago
Yep sorry for that. We introduced query limit to prevent abuse and control cost during (free) beta but initially set it very low for our target userbase (50 queries/day). We increased it since to 200/day after receiving similar feedback and of course once we launch there will be no limit. Kagi Maps is still work in progress (beta like everything else) and we just didn't get to shipping this feature. We are not using OSM only though, and many users have complimented the map to be better than Google maps already (for features that we have shipped).

svnpenn 5y ago

Please don't spam your paid walled garden.

Semaphor 5y ago

I registered for the beta, I must say I have low expectations, but I'm ready to be positively surprised ;)

rym_ 5y ago

how can you search 'with privacy' / anonymously if it is tied to an account.

freediver 5y ago
Privacy and anonymity are not the same. We do not claim anonymity although if you read our privacy policy you will see that it is very close to it (as we do not log searches at all, so it it not possible to tie them to a user).

Keyframe 5y ago

literally depends on page speed for revenue. Turns out, this might not be true at all.

lewantmontreal 5y ago

Looks really nice. If I had any suggestions it would be to use a different search for each example, now Magic the gathering is used twice. I can imagine potential customers will love to see what the final product looks like before purchasing. Best of luck, looks really ambitious!

fomine3 5y ago

I don't care much page speed when I want to search some deep information. Sadly Google getting significantly worse for indexing.

xbmcuser 5y ago

Unless you are using an ad blocker or have disabled it in the settings chrome precaches so for the majority of the people there probably is no 1.5-2 second load time. But I expect majority of the people browsing hacker news would have it disabled so would have the slower loadtime

charcircuit 5y ago

Google isn't as bad as you are saying. Doing a search of "test" the result page is about 130 KiB. This is an order of magnitude smaller than what you claim. It also loads in between 900ms and 1 second the majority of the time.

mro_name 5y ago

> a company with so much resources That is the problem: resources show up in abundance, not in scarcity. Only small or poor creators usually can do the latter. Conways law at work, I guess.

skinkestek 5y ago

I've tried Kagi the last two or three weeks and the page speed is a nice bonus but the real advantage it has over DDG and Google is that it does find the pages I look for, rank them reasonably well and doesn't mix in pages that doesn't contain my search terms. It is just like being back in 2007 or something when Google worked this way and it is wonderful. I've used DDG for the past few years and I still hope they too will succeed, but with DDG the quality is the same or (slightly) lower than Google and the bang operator comes in handy many times a week. With Kagi I only think I have used the bang operator once (yes, they have it). It is that good: when I look at the results I know immediately that there is no way Google or DDG can do it better except by pure luck and also my results are already there on first or second try so why bother shopping around? Bonuses: - bangs work like in DDG (I think, I don't use them anymore) - doublequotes actually work unlike in Google and DDG - even without doublequotes it doesn't stray very far from my query - I can add lenses (?) or something (I have not bothered yet, the defaults are good enough) Yep, I'm a walking billboard now, but I'm not paid in anyway and don't know any of the people behind kagi, it just happens to be the biggest improvement I have seen since Google replaced everything else sometime around twenty years ago. Edit: yes, it is a paid product but it is free during beta and so good that I would consider Kagi gift cards for friends in tech if it was paid, just like I'd consider gifting WhatsApp subscriptions before Facebook bought and subverted it (yes, I was considering worse words). Edit 2: I'll do this for your product too if I love it. I did for WhatsApp and Google+ and in real life for the insurance company I have used the last few years.

annadane 5y ago
> - doublequotes actually work unlike in Google and DDG This drives me nuts. If you're going to have a competitor to Google (ddg) at least give me proper functionality to refine my searches
- skinkestek 5y ago
  Yep! How this passes QA is and why everyone else who knew old Google isn't crying out loudly is beyond my understanding.
5y ago

danvayn 5y ago

I'd give your project a shot but the signup funnel for your beta is a little funny -- you should let people choose to leave the textbox-based questions blank and still get an invite. If you just made those parts drop-downs with the most popular answers and had an 'Other' option that makes a text-field option, you would probably get much more valuable data and more of it. I would not be surprised if you had some amount of dropoff in your beta signup funnel due to questions that make potential users feel like theyre being 'put on the spot'

buro9 5y ago

I can't try kagi before signing up. I'm not sure that I want to sign up and give you data when your premise is to not mine the data. Is that your premise? How long do you retain knowledge of what had been searched? The personalise features put me off. The level of personalisation I want is course location... I.e. online shops in my country, or if I search for something in Liverpool pick the right Liverpool in the world... Both of these are relative to where I am and an IP geo lookup is roughly good enough with an override in the worst case. I'm not sure precisely what your differentiation is (again, can't find it without signing up)... But I want to be very sure before I sign up to anything that you treat user data as a radioactive resource. Thankfully given that GDPR exists and everything done on search is related to a user profile I'm assuming that you're petrified of storing and using data... But I don't know as the site didn't reassure on that front and I didn't see the privacy policy at the foot of the home page. I want to like what you're doing so much... But you've designed it to have friction to that discovery.

ralferoo 5y ago
> I'm not sure precisely what your differentiation is (again, can't find it without signing up)... I'd echo this. I actually even went to the site to see what was so good about your search, then realised I can't even test with a single query without signing up, and lost interest.
deleted 5y ago
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freediver 5y ago
> I can't try kagi before signing up. Perhaps it is not obvious that Kagi has not launched yet. We are in closed beta, and email is used to invite people who want to be beta testers, nothing else. Once we officially launch, everyone will have the ability to try it. >I'm not sure precisely what your differentiation is (again, can't find it without signing up). The FAQ has a lot of information you may find useful https://kagi.com/faq https://kagi.com/faq

_8j50 5y ago

I hope you won't be requiring logins in the future. Big deal breaker for me.

stavros 5y ago

Kagi looks interesting, can I have an invite?

no_time 5y ago

Interesting business but I can't help but be a bit worried. You promise not to monetize usage data and such but as a paid search engine, you are in the perfect position to do so. Even more so than Google or DDG since neither of those have my name and other PII. You would have my payment information AND valuable insight into my interests.

freediver 5y ago
Yes, and zero incentives to misuse that information, as the entire business literally depends on the trust between us and the user, and is entirely supported by user subscriptions. Incentives are perfectly aligned too - we have to constantly keep improving the product or you will jump to a (free) alternative.
- no_time 5y ago
  I admit I might be more paranoid than the average person. This could work if we knew each other IRL or something like that but as it stands what you said is a nicely worded version of "Source: dude trust me." Accepting crypto payments could be a solution but I'd totally get why'd you want to avoid that.
  - freediver 5y ago
    There is nothing else we can possibly tangibly offer, and you are right to have high standards. Note that also we never say a version of "dude trust me", but lay down the facts how the business operates, what the vision is and why are we doing it. The best we can do really is have a business model that aligns incentives with the users and weirdly enough, this is already an innovation in this market. Then, create the best possible product that users will love. Gaining trust is a process that can not be skipped.

kypro 5y ago

That's a lovely landing page and a nice domain you have there. I really like the idea of a premium search engine too, I'll give it a go for sure. I'm a little uncomfortable with having to be logged in though... Ideally if I'm going to pay for a search engine I would like to do that as anonymously as possible. Best of luck with the project, I'd love to see some competition in search again. Google has been getting worse for years and they have no real incentive to improve given their dominance and lack of disruption in the space.

equivocates 5y ago

Don’t really want to login to search.

impetus1 5y ago

When i code in python or react, I get proud of my 900kb spa web pages. I respect your site so much in fact, I would like to apply to work at your company. Where do I apply?

executive 5y ago

> 100% free of ads and tracking. > forces you to login

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y ago

I looked at it, and I'm uncomfortable with the fact I have to be logged in, so you know all my search results, know my exact identity (through the credit card) and can analyze them and store forever (you can say you don't do that, but you cannot prove it). At least with Google I can delete cookies, disable fingerprinting and use a VPN, and hope they don't have my search history. Furthermore, you are in US jurisdiction, so the government can request access to your data and you can never tell anybody about that. What about a version of that where I pay a few cents for each search, using Lightning Network, for example?

charwalker 5y ago

I don't see how your paid service is any different from Google beyond interface and lack of ability to use it for free/no signup to compare. Or I can use duckduckgo without needing to sign up and get your promised security with 1-2 second searches for free. Maybe you'll have enough takers to get off the ground but I'll rely on other tools.