22 ms·

Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

373 points by bcg361 5y ago

the-dude 5y ago
Test driving for a week now. Fast. Relevant results, haven't reached for alternatives (backups) just yet. Disclaimer : haven't done a deep project yet ( new software stack or deep bug fix for example ). Would pay for a neutral search engine, right now ( and I have no subscriptions atm, not even NF ).
contravariant 5y ago
> Be snappy and responsive on every device even without JavaScript enabled. Huh, I thought I'd catch them out by disabling all javascript but they actually didn't use any for this webpage. Nice.
- freediver 5y ago
  Not just that but all of Kagi Search works without JavaScript! We see JavaScript as a way to enhance product experience, not create it.
  - throw10920 5y ago
    > We see JavaScript as a way to enhance product experience, not create it. What an incredible one-liner, along multiple value axes.
Kalanos 5y ago
Good i was getting so sick of non-premium search engines. Premiumness is what I have been looking for.
NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
Thank you for this! I would really love to pay you for this service. Chomping at the bit. However, I and many others would be much more willing to do this if we don't have to rely on your privacy policy (i.e., pinky swear) to keep our data private. I think the simplest thing for you to do would be to implement a an option that allows paying with cryptocurrency (ideally Monero), and which doesn't require an email address. Just generate a subscriber number or username, allow login with user + pass (+ TOTP/HOTP) and allow me to fill my account with crypto! Someone below mentions a token-based scheme for injecting noise; that's more elegant in some ways but of course more complicated to implement. thank you for your work!
foreigner 5y ago
When the second item on your startup's FAQ is how to pronounce the company name...
pauldd7 5y ago
Looks like a great product and I've signed up. One thing from your FAQ Page: You list Kagi as using significantly less CO2 than Google and Bing. Since Kagi is scraping both Google+Bing - wouldn't the Kagi CO2 total of each search be Google+Bing+Other Sources+Kagi?
- freediver 5y ago
  To clarify: The CO2 measure is in the FAQ is based only on the amount of data transferred over the internet and Kagi wins here because we have the smallest payload. It does not include energy used to generate it, but Google claims it is carbon neutral since 2008 I think? and Bing is on its way to do so.
jmakov 5y ago
I must say that going from google, DDG, Quant I'm most satisfied with you.com. This seems to be a similar engine.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
ben_w 5y ago
Gosh, I was not expecting my old shareware payment provider’s domain to end up in a new service such as this. Makes me feel old.
Shadonototra 5y ago
premium browser using our harvested data.. hypocrisy lvl 10000 > Kagi includes data from Apple, Google, Microsoft, Yelp, Wikipedia and others come back after the reset Murica, this way of dealing with things is kinda outdated is this yet another nonsense YC pump&dump thing?
_Donny 5y ago
If this really lets me block certain websites for good, then I'm sold. I absolutely hate those sites that scrape other well-known sites (like StackOverflow, Quora, Reddit) and add ads and SEO spam. They are increasingly better at being on the top of the search results, and I cannot get rid of them.
- daxuak 5y ago
  I'm in the same boat. Right now I do this rather manually, e.g. uBlacklist on chrome.
_8j50 5y ago
Been using it for a week now, very happy with it. I still had a few times where google had better results but I will pay for kagi (so long as they have flexible payment options) Check out their Orion browser too, been playing around with it.
scelerat 5y ago
Is this Kagi in any way related to the defunct payment processor which used to bear the same URL? https://tidbits.com/2016/08/04/kagi-shuts-down-after-falling-prey-to-fraud/ https://tidbits.com/2016/08/04/kagi-shuts-down-after-falling...
- karmelapple 5y ago
  Doesn’t seem like it. I didn’t see any reference to it on the website, either, but the last time this appeared on HN I was hoping someone would ask. Since I haven’t seen the co-founder mention it, I hope he might make a little Easter egg or add it to the FAQ somewhere to pay homage to Kagi. That company made me my first money as a teenager with software.
calltrak 5y ago
rdtwo 5y ago
Can you show us some examples of where you are better. Pick something that normally spews out seo garbage like “Seattle gardening” and show me what you can do.
keenethery 5y ago
Wish you well on your new venture. The domain name worked well for me for 25 years. Here’s to your future decades. Kee Nethery
adultSwim 5y ago
My biggest issue with our current search engines is the lack of transparent open governance. My municipal water supply and the Debian project provide examples of better models.
stavros 5y ago
I've used Kagi (and you.com) a bit, and I'm amazed at how much better the results were for the few queries I made. It wasn't blogspam any more, I got actual articles from actual sites. Hopefully I'll keep using them, but Google is overdue a disruption.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- alphagrep12345 5y ago
  What do you mean by actual article? How is it different from a blog post? And why don't you like blog posts? Just curious :)
  - stavros 5y ago
    I meant I got high-quality blog posts from real people rather than copied/mass generated/spammy content, sorry.
freediver 5y ago
Founder here. Thanks for submitting it, but I am afraid there is not much to see right now. We are still in closed beta (mostly to control cost and gradually improve user experience), with much more left to do. There are some examples of what Kagi can do in my twitter feed. [1] Main idea of Kagi is to offer a paid search product, where user is also the customer and is central to everything that happens. Btw. Kagi is pronounced ka-gi (similar to yogi), I get asked that a lot so there it is... If you want to beta test, feel free to sign up and we will do our best to send an invite within a week. [1] https://twitter.com/vladquant https://twitter.com/vladquant
- Lio 5y ago
  Hi Freediver, Would you mind telling us a little of the story about Kagi the company behind the product? It’s really interesting to hear that you’re using Crystal. Where are you guys based and how have you bootstraped? Good luck and keep at it, this is a really interesting project.
  - freediver 5y ago
    Sure. We are running on a tight budget, completely bootstrapped by funds from my previous exit. Trying to control cost and all that while establishing product-market fit, which is the reason the beta is closed for now. Instead of starting with technology, I started by selecting people that I can work with and are crazy enough to accept working on such an ambitious idea. It turned out that they really liked Crystal and, so, here we are. I have over 30 years of dev experience, and in my previous startup I wrote a significant part of the code. But never wrote a line of code in Crystal before so it does make me feel a little uncomfortable. Its performance is truly amazing and that is what I care most about. Our front-end payload is HTML + vanilla JS (which btw is not needed, everything works in no-js), and probably about 100k on average, very lightweight. I am based in SF Bay Area, and we are a fully remote team. Thanks for your interest!
    - BilalBudhani 5y ago
      great to see Crystal getting adopted in more production grade projects, honestly, It would be awesome to see the language receiving more traction in 2022
jazzyjackson 5y ago
omg they let me apply from/to dates on search results, I'm in love just got my invite after a couple days of signing up, will be trying it out, but so far no stackoverflow/github issue clones, and they allow setting "preferred" and "muted" domains, I might pay whatever they ask I'm keen to know their business plan however. Hope they don't get acquihired for the algorithms, never to offer these features again...
- machiaweliczny 5y ago
  Yeah I wonder why google doesn't allow to blacklist domain for users. They could basically use it for ranking (eg. include paying, long-lived accounts to prevent abuse). Especially on youtube. They only have blacklisting in news but it's too dumb (eg. I want to block gossip but it's about sport person so instead it thinks I'm not interested in sport). Wait I know why, because somewhere they have retarded KPI that will go down if people stop clicking on ads from spam websites that only show ads. Who would imagine
- nprateem 5y ago
  If I tell you you just need to put a - in front of a domain on Google to mute it will you also pay me whatever I want?
  - LQexplanation 5y ago
    Try to mute this way 10-20-100 domains in the same time, preferably on mobile. True, you can copy-paste this litany, but the whole process would be a misery.
    - j-james 5y ago
      I keep a running list of blogspam/SEO sites and use uBlock Origin's custom filters to remove them from Google/DuckDuckGo. ie. google.*##.g:has(a[href*="realpython.com"]) duckduckgo.*##.results > div:has(a[href*="realpython.com"])
  - jazzyjackson 5y ago
RistrettoMike 5y ago
Sounds awesome, I'd gladly pay for a product like this - I signed up for the waitlist :) Cheers devs!
- philippgerard 5y ago
  Same here, I can't wait for an alternative with actually useful search results and good filters. Search is one product I use often every day but I'm stuck with either privacy-respecting options that don't yield useful results, Bing-themes or Google, which used to produce decent results but increasingly is just full of search spam. Good luck with this, I'm happy to pay!
speedgoose 5y ago
I wonder how it collects the results from “the best search engines on the market”. Bing’s API in Azure has very specific terms of use that do not allow something like Kagi, and Google Search API is not designed to build a generic search engine.
- ColinHayhurst 5y ago
  We are an alternative: https://www.mojeek.com/services/search/web-search-api/ https://www.mojeek.com/services/search/web-search-api/
- skinkestek 5y ago
  Somebody asked the other day. Kagi pay for api access to both Google and Bing.
  - speedgoose 5y ago
    Interesting. How does one can access such APIs ? Do you need to know someone with an important position at Google ?
    - ColinHayhurst 5y ago
      Contact me if you want to try this: https://www.mojeek.com/services/search/web-search-api/ https://www.mojeek.com/services/search/web-search-api/
    - skinkestek 5y ago
      No, I don't think so. Try searching: https://kagi.com/search?q=google+search+api https://kagi.com/search?q=google+search+api or similar in your preferred search engine.
      - speedgoose 5y ago
        Have you tried to click on the results ? The public google search API is very limited, you can't do much with it.
GEBBL 5y ago
Signed up! Good luck! The logo is a g which is in the Google ballpark. why not K?
- freediver 5y ago
  Good question! The designer insisted that Kagi logo is "anchored" in the letter "g" and we had to agree. Besides, can't let Google own letter "g" too, can we? ;)
  - GEBBL 5y ago
    Stick it to the man! Good answer :)
- mda 5y ago
  Heh that was the first thing i thought, not a fan of the icon. If you claim to be better why use small mind tricks like this?
Semaphor 5y ago
Been using them for about a week, very happy with it. Regional results (especially since the last update) feel as automatic as google. While I still hope they’ll add my suggestion of a bang for region switches, most queries I do don’t need one, and it properly switches between English and German. All of the DDG bangs. Seriosuly, search without bangs is nothing I’d ever want to go back to. Built-In Domain Blacklist. Goodbye Pinterest. Forever. General results are great. More relevant results than either DDG or Google and a great presentation (like showing snippets from accepted or upvoted SO answers) And I have not even played around with advanced filters like lenses (which people in their discord seem to love). Negatives: So far, I’d say only that the widgets are less usable than DDGs. I had low expectations, but I’m really very positively surprised.
- drcongo 5y ago
  I've been in the beta for a while and I find Kagi results to be way ahead of anyone else. I've made it the default search in Alfred so that I have instant Kagi in Safari.
- snielson 5y ago
  I've been using Kagi for a couple months and generally like it. It's the default search engine in my browser. My only complaint is that occasionally I run a search and get zero results, like the page is literally blank (I try the search again and it is still blank). I then try the search on Google and get what I'm looking for. I guess this happens because Kagi's index is smaller, but I don't really know.
  - freediver 5y ago
    It happens because there is a bug that we are still trying to find :) Rest assured we will find it! (it is probably somewhere in the way we feed feed data through socket for maximum performance and something either on GCP end or our client/server code is 'too' optimized)
- trhoad 5y ago
  What's a "bang"?
mikebos 5y ago
I just got the invite yesterday and used it only two times. No seo spam at first glance, the first result is usable. Keep up the good work!
skinkestek 5y ago
Another happy user here: The time I save by not having to sift through all the utter nonsense that Google, Bing and even DuckDuckGo showes in my face any given day will easily be worth $10 a month alone and on top it is sanity preserving, privacy respecting and has no ads. Its kind of like a polished version of https://search.marginalia.nu https://search.marginalia.nu just with a much larger index. The best explanation I can give is maybe: Kagi is to other search engines today what Google was to other search engines 20 years ago: Outstanding quality, better than anything else I have tried - and rapidly improving - no nonsense (again like old Google) and nifty extra features (again like old Google). (Note: I haven't tested Neeva yet so I cannot say if Kagi is better than them. But compared to all the rest I have tried the last ten years it is in a differen league.)
MaxikCZ 5y ago
Both Kagi search and Orion browser sounds like a dream come true. I hope to get into beta soon. Also wish for Orion browser to come to android aswell
bmc7505 5y ago
Kägi is also the name of a Swiss chocolate maker: https://www.kaegi.com/ https://www.kaegi.com/
amatecha 5y ago
Whoa... this was really confusing to me for a moment. Kagi.com used to be one of the premier digital commerce platforms for software and shareware, especially Mac games, serving customers from 1994 until 2016. [0][1][2] Anyone who registered one of Ambrosia's awesome shareware games used Kagi's services, for example. It's really weird to see the company name and domain return again in this way! Best of luck to the team to live up to this legendary name :) [0] https://web.archive.org/web/19961216050944/http://www.kagi.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/19961216050944/http://www.kagi.c... [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20160413151203/https://www.kagi.com/company/about-kagi https://web.archive.org/web/20160413151203/https://www.kagi.... [2] https://tidbits.com/2016/08/04/kagi-shuts-down-after-falling-prey-to-fraud/ https://tidbits.com/2016/08/04/kagi-shuts-down-after-falling...
- freediver 5y ago
  #nopressure
- Youden 5y ago
  The name reminded me of Kägi, a Swiss chocolate wafer: https://www.kaegi.com/en/ https://www.kaegi.com/en/
- Taniwha 5y ago
  Yeah, that was my thought too
- zmb_ 5y ago
  This brought back memories. The first money I ever made from software as a teenager was through Kagi. It was some Mac utility shareware apps written in REALbasic around the year 2000.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    REALbasic? Hmm, if it was about 2006 I’d wonder if it was some of my creations. Long time since I did shareware in any language, though. Something like £2k total takings, I wasn’t good at business.
gkasev 5y ago
There have been a couple of discussions on HN lately [0][1] about the current state of search engine results, be it served by Google, Bing, DDG or other. Also, it seems like there is a lot of work on search engine alternatives as in the case of Kagi and also here [2] to name but a few. Of all alternatives, Kagi seems to be off to a very good start and I personally am a very happy beta user. What I have not seen so far being discussed anywhere, though, is the Willingness to Pay [3] for a search engine alternative, say like Kagi. What do you think is an acceptable monthly subscription price? What do you think is an expensive price? What do you think is a prohibitively expensive price? Here is my take on those questions: 5$, 10$, 20$. UPDATE: I'll summarize all answers and post the results here for reference. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29782186 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29782186 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29772136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29772136 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29690877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29690877 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willingness_to_pay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willingness_to_pay
- machiaweliczny 5y ago
  I could imagine paying even up to $100+ but only for niche use-cases (finance data, fiding experts/employees). I would like ability to create plugins for search usecases and for example take 20% cut, basically allow for search app store. I wonder if it would work.
  - azeirah 5y ago
    The idea of search plugins for specific use-cases sounds incredibly incredibly interesting!
- leiferksn 5y ago
  I would say for general purposes (casual everyday searches) - anything between 5$ and 10$ / month would be a good price for me. This is of course dependent on the quality of the results - it has to be a real service and not a marketing platform. Most of the single user licenses for web services like github, dropbox are between 5-10$, so the search engine had better deliver quality results, if it requires payments.
xvilka 5y ago
I also recommend to think about something like Nigma[1] (Russian metasearch engine) had done before, something along the lines of Wolfram Alpha - mathematics, physics, chemistry. It's possible to integrate with something like Sage Math for this purpose, should not be hard but would be immensely useful for many. [1] https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9D%D0%B8%D0%B3%D0%BC%D0%B0 https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9D%D0%B8%D0%B3%D0%BC%D0%...
u-rate 5y ago
People pay for VPNs but continue using the web with their normal accounts, thinking their privacy is protected. A private search engine would be a much better way to protect the privacy.
tmsbrg 5y ago
It seems the trend lately for new services to be built with rather high monthly fees. From the FAQ: "We plan to offer entry level plans for as low as $10/month, unlimited plan at around $20/mo as well as make bundles (to include Kagi email and other services), family plans and annual payment discounts available." I have to say I support a lot of these initiatives, but I can't help but think altogether they're creating a division of the web into premium services the rich can afford, and low quality services for the masses. Most of the world doesn't have the silicon valley salaries where $10/month is considered low. I feel like there should be an ideological consideration as well to make better services accessible to as many people as possible. Just my 2 cents.
- muskmusk 5y ago
  > I have to say I support a lot of these initiatives, but I can't help but think altogether they're creating a division of the web into premium services the rich can afford, and low quality services for the masses What do you mean? Like cars, houses, restaurants, groceries and almost literally everything else on the planet? :)
- freediver 5y ago
  > but I can't help but think altogether they're creating a division of the web into premium services the rich can afford If I may, there is huge complexity at hand here. It is one thing to offer a meditation app for $2/mo, where its peak complexity is changing colors on the screen. It is entire different to be able to offer the entire internet searchable in less than 500ms in the palm of your hand. The ability to offer that at $20-30/mo with robust privacy protection is frankly a miracle. Second factor, is that Kagi is bootstrapped and our priorities are quality of services offered, not the number of users. And knowing what I know, it is simply not economically viable to do this at a lower price point and hope for sustainability of the business. Finally, the price is only one side of equation, the other is value. The question is will you be getting enough value for your money? For me, the ability for my children to use a search engine without being bombarded with ads from an early age has a lot of value. I already pay $15/mo for YouTube Premium for the same reason. I understand that not every parent is in this position to choose, but many are. Having said all that I do not pretend that Kagi is designed to be for everyone, like Google is. It is a premium service for a reason - the cost of providing the quality that we provide is simply what it is, and we clearly said no to the ads from the get-go. Remember that the main reason most of the mainstream web is free are ads. The ideological consideration you refer to is something I agree with, but that role is on governments to fullfill IMO. I do not think they will anytime soon so I am doing what I can. Access to information like access to water should be part of public infrastructure and we miss the latter in the modern society (as public libraries are not enough anymore). We can easily get into the realm of politics here so I choose to stop :)
tut-urut-utut 5y ago
While they claim they support privacy now, I'm still hesitant to create an account there. I can even use Google to search semi anonymously, given a proper ad-blocker, but creating an account to use a search engine? So I need to be fully logged in and identifiable and all my queries are associated to my accounts without any doubt because I signed in? No thanks. I don't want that some hidden ToS change or future acquisition expose all my searches in the future, even if current search engine operates in a good fate.
- no_time 5y ago
  Founder replied to me about the exact same issue in an older thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29672560 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29672560 I suppose it's the fault of online payment infrastructure more than them. Sure, they could do it the Mullvad way and accept envelopes with cash and an UID but that probably wouldnt scale.
kajiryoji 5y ago
Happy user here, but has anyone tested kagi vs devonagent?

373 points by bcg361 5y ago

Test driving for a week now. Fast. Relevant results, haven't reached for alternatives (backups) just yet. Disclaimer : haven't done a deep project yet ( new software stack or deep bug fix for example ). Would pay for a neutral search engine, right now ( and I have no subscriptions atm, not even NF ).

contravariant 5y ago

> Be snappy and responsive on every device even without JavaScript enabled. Huh, I thought I'd catch them out by disabling all javascript but they actually didn't use any for this webpage. Nice.

freediver 5y ago
Not just that but all of Kagi Search works without JavaScript! We see JavaScript as a way to enhance product experience, not create it.
- throw10920 5y ago
  > We see JavaScript as a way to enhance product experience, not create it. What an incredible one-liner, along multiple value axes.

Kalanos 5y ago

Good i was getting so sick of non-premium search engines. Premiumness is what I have been looking for.

NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago

Thank you for this! I would really love to pay you for this service. Chomping at the bit. However, I and many others would be much more willing to do this if we don't have to rely on your privacy policy (i.e., pinky swear) to keep our data private. I think the simplest thing for you to do would be to implement a an option that allows paying with cryptocurrency (ideally Monero), and which doesn't require an email address. Just generate a subscriber number or username, allow login with user + pass (+ TOTP/HOTP) and allow me to fill my account with crypto! Someone below mentions a token-based scheme for injecting noise; that's more elegant in some ways but of course more complicated to implement. thank you for your work!

foreigner 5y ago

When the second item on your startup's FAQ is how to pronounce the company name...

pauldd7 5y ago

Looks like a great product and I've signed up. One thing from your FAQ Page: You list Kagi as using significantly less CO2 than Google and Bing. Since Kagi is scraping both Google+Bing - wouldn't the Kagi CO2 total of each search be Google+Bing+Other Sources+Kagi?

freediver 5y ago
To clarify: The CO2 measure is in the FAQ is based only on the amount of data transferred over the internet and Kagi wins here because we have the smallest payload. It does not include energy used to generate it, but Google claims it is carbon neutral since 2008 I think? and Bing is on its way to do so.

jmakov 5y ago

I must say that going from google, DDG, Quant I'm most satisfied with you.com. This seems to be a similar engine.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

ben_w 5y ago

Gosh, I was not expecting my old shareware payment provider’s domain to end up in a new service such as this. Makes me feel old.

Shadonototra 5y ago

premium browser using our harvested data.. hypocrisy lvl 10000 > Kagi includes data from Apple, Google, Microsoft, Yelp, Wikipedia and others come back after the reset Murica, this way of dealing with things is kinda outdated is this yet another nonsense YC pump&dump thing?

_Donny 5y ago

If this really lets me block certain websites for good, then I'm sold. I absolutely hate those sites that scrape other well-known sites (like StackOverflow, Quora, Reddit) and add ads and SEO spam. They are increasingly better at being on the top of the search results, and I cannot get rid of them.

daxuak 5y ago
I'm in the same boat. Right now I do this rather manually, e.g. uBlacklist on chrome.

_8j50 5y ago

Been using it for a week now, very happy with it. I still had a few times where google had better results but I will pay for kagi (so long as they have flexible payment options) Check out their Orion browser too, been playing around with it.

scelerat 5y ago

Is this Kagi in any way related to the defunct payment processor which used to bear the same URL? https://tidbits.com/2016/08/04/kagi-shuts-down-after-falling-prey-to-fraud/ https://tidbits.com/2016/08/04/kagi-shuts-down-after-falling...

karmelapple 5y ago
Doesn’t seem like it. I didn’t see any reference to it on the website, either, but the last time this appeared on HN I was hoping someone would ask. Since I haven’t seen the co-founder mention it, I hope he might make a little Easter egg or add it to the FAQ somewhere to pay homage to Kagi. That company made me my first money as a teenager with software.

calltrak 5y ago

rdtwo 5y ago

Can you show us some examples of where you are better. Pick something that normally spews out seo garbage like “Seattle gardening” and show me what you can do.

keenethery 5y ago

Wish you well on your new venture. The domain name worked well for me for 25 years. Here’s to your future decades. Kee Nethery

adultSwim 5y ago

My biggest issue with our current search engines is the lack of transparent open governance. My municipal water supply and the Debian project provide examples of better models.

stavros 5y ago

I've used Kagi (and you.com) a bit, and I'm amazed at how much better the results were for the few queries I made. It wasn't blogspam any more, I got actual articles from actual sites. Hopefully I'll keep using them, but Google is overdue a disruption.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
alphagrep12345 5y ago
What do you mean by actual article? How is it different from a blog post? And why don't you like blog posts? Just curious :)
- stavros 5y ago
  I meant I got high-quality blog posts from real people rather than copied/mass generated/spammy content, sorry.

freediver 5y ago

Founder here. Thanks for submitting it, but I am afraid there is not much to see right now. We are still in closed beta (mostly to control cost and gradually improve user experience), with much more left to do. There are some examples of what Kagi can do in my twitter feed. [1] Main idea of Kagi is to offer a paid search product, where user is also the customer and is central to everything that happens. Btw. Kagi is pronounced ka-gi (similar to yogi), I get asked that a lot so there it is... If you want to beta test, feel free to sign up and we will do our best to send an invite within a week. [1] https://twitter.com/vladquant https://twitter.com/vladquant

Lio 5y ago
Hi Freediver, Would you mind telling us a little of the story about Kagi the company behind the product? It’s really interesting to hear that you’re using Crystal. Where are you guys based and how have you bootstraped? Good luck and keep at it, this is a really interesting project.
- freediver 5y ago
  Sure. We are running on a tight budget, completely bootstrapped by funds from my previous exit. Trying to control cost and all that while establishing product-market fit, which is the reason the beta is closed for now. Instead of starting with technology, I started by selecting people that I can work with and are crazy enough to accept working on such an ambitious idea. It turned out that they really liked Crystal and, so, here we are. I have over 30 years of dev experience, and in my previous startup I wrote a significant part of the code. But never wrote a line of code in Crystal before so it does make me feel a little uncomfortable. Its performance is truly amazing and that is what I care most about. Our front-end payload is HTML + vanilla JS (which btw is not needed, everything works in no-js), and probably about 100k on average, very lightweight. I am based in SF Bay Area, and we are a fully remote team. Thanks for your interest!
  - BilalBudhani 5y ago
    great to see Crystal getting adopted in more production grade projects, honestly, It would be awesome to see the language receiving more traction in 2022

jazzyjackson 5y ago

omg they let me apply from/to dates on search results, I'm in love just got my invite after a couple days of signing up, will be trying it out, but so far no stackoverflow/github issue clones, and they allow setting "preferred" and "muted" domains, I might pay whatever they ask I'm keen to know their business plan however. Hope they don't get acquihired for the algorithms, never to offer these features again...

machiaweliczny 5y ago
Yeah I wonder why google doesn't allow to blacklist domain for users. They could basically use it for ranking (eg. include paying, long-lived accounts to prevent abuse). Especially on youtube. They only have blacklisting in news but it's too dumb (eg. I want to block gossip but it's about sport person so instead it thinks I'm not interested in sport). Wait I know why, because somewhere they have retarded KPI that will go down if people stop clicking on ads from spam websites that only show ads. Who would imagine
nprateem 5y ago
If I tell you you just need to put a - in front of a domain on Google to mute it will you also pay me whatever I want?
- LQexplanation 5y ago
  Try to mute this way 10-20-100 domains in the same time, preferably on mobile. True, you can copy-paste this litany, but the whole process would be a misery.
  - j-james 5y ago
    I keep a running list of blogspam/SEO sites and use uBlock Origin's custom filters to remove them from Google/DuckDuckGo. ie. google.*##.g:has(a[href*="realpython.com"]) duckduckgo.*##.results > div:has(a[href*="realpython.com"])
- jazzyjackson 5y ago

RistrettoMike 5y ago

Sounds awesome, I'd gladly pay for a product like this - I signed up for the waitlist :) Cheers devs!

philippgerard 5y ago
Same here, I can't wait for an alternative with actually useful search results and good filters. Search is one product I use often every day but I'm stuck with either privacy-respecting options that don't yield useful results, Bing-themes or Google, which used to produce decent results but increasingly is just full of search spam. Good luck with this, I'm happy to pay!

speedgoose 5y ago

I wonder how it collects the results from “the best search engines on the market”. Bing’s API in Azure has very specific terms of use that do not allow something like Kagi, and Google Search API is not designed to build a generic search engine.

ColinHayhurst 5y ago
We are an alternative: https://www.mojeek.com/services/search/web-search-api/ https://www.mojeek.com/services/search/web-search-api/
skinkestek 5y ago
Somebody asked the other day. Kagi pay for api access to both Google and Bing.
- speedgoose 5y ago
  Interesting. How does one can access such APIs ? Do you need to know someone with an important position at Google ?
  - ColinHayhurst 5y ago
    Contact me if you want to try this: https://www.mojeek.com/services/search/web-search-api/ https://www.mojeek.com/services/search/web-search-api/
  - skinkestek 5y ago
    No, I don't think so. Try searching: https://kagi.com/search?q=google+search+api https://kagi.com/search?q=google+search+api or similar in your preferred search engine.
    - speedgoose 5y ago
      Have you tried to click on the results ? The public google search API is very limited, you can't do much with it.

GEBBL 5y ago

Signed up! Good luck! The logo is a g which is in the Google ballpark. why not K?

freediver 5y ago
Good question! The designer insisted that Kagi logo is "anchored" in the letter "g" and we had to agree. Besides, can't let Google own letter "g" too, can we? ;)
- GEBBL 5y ago
  Stick it to the man! Good answer :)
mda 5y ago
Heh that was the first thing i thought, not a fan of the icon. If you claim to be better why use small mind tricks like this?

Semaphor 5y ago

Been using them for about a week, very happy with it. Regional results (especially since the last update) feel as automatic as google. While I still hope they’ll add my suggestion of a bang for region switches, most queries I do don’t need one, and it properly switches between English and German. All of the DDG bangs. Seriosuly, search without bangs is nothing I’d ever want to go back to. Built-In Domain Blacklist. Goodbye Pinterest. Forever. General results are great. More relevant results than either DDG or Google and a great presentation (like showing snippets from accepted or upvoted SO answers) And I have not even played around with advanced filters like lenses (which people in their discord seem to love). Negatives: So far, I’d say only that the widgets are less usable than DDGs. I had low expectations, but I’m really very positively surprised.

drcongo 5y ago
I've been in the beta for a while and I find Kagi results to be way ahead of anyone else. I've made it the default search in Alfred so that I have instant Kagi in Safari.
snielson 5y ago
I've been using Kagi for a couple months and generally like it. It's the default search engine in my browser. My only complaint is that occasionally I run a search and get zero results, like the page is literally blank (I try the search again and it is still blank). I then try the search on Google and get what I'm looking for. I guess this happens because Kagi's index is smaller, but I don't really know.
- freediver 5y ago
  It happens because there is a bug that we are still trying to find :) Rest assured we will find it! (it is probably somewhere in the way we feed feed data through socket for maximum performance and something either on GCP end or our client/server code is 'too' optimized)
trhoad 5y ago
What's a "bang"?

mikebos 5y ago

I just got the invite yesterday and used it only two times. No seo spam at first glance, the first result is usable. Keep up the good work!

skinkestek 5y ago

Another happy user here: The time I save by not having to sift through all the utter nonsense that Google, Bing and even DuckDuckGo showes in my face any given day will easily be worth $10 a month alone and on top it is sanity preserving, privacy respecting and has no ads. Its kind of like a polished version of https://search.marginalia.nu https://search.marginalia.nu just with a much larger index. The best explanation I can give is maybe: Kagi is to other search engines today what Google was to other search engines 20 years ago: Outstanding quality, better than anything else I have tried - and rapidly improving - no nonsense (again like old Google) and nifty extra features (again like old Google). (Note: I haven't tested Neeva yet so I cannot say if Kagi is better than them. But compared to all the rest I have tried the last ten years it is in a differen league.)

MaxikCZ 5y ago

Both Kagi search and Orion browser sounds like a dream come true. I hope to get into beta soon. Also wish for Orion browser to come to android aswell

bmc7505 5y ago

Kägi is also the name of a Swiss chocolate maker: https://www.kaegi.com/ https://www.kaegi.com/

amatecha 5y ago

Whoa... this was really confusing to me for a moment. Kagi.com used to be one of the premier digital commerce platforms for software and shareware, especially Mac games, serving customers from 1994 until 2016. [0][1][2] Anyone who registered one of Ambrosia's awesome shareware games used Kagi's services, for example. It's really weird to see the company name and domain return again in this way! Best of luck to the team to live up to this legendary name :) [0] https://web.archive.org/web/19961216050944/http://www.kagi.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/19961216050944/http://www.kagi.c... [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20160413151203/https://www.kagi.com/company/about-kagi https://web.archive.org/web/20160413151203/https://www.kagi.... [2] https://tidbits.com/2016/08/04/kagi-shuts-down-after-falling-prey-to-fraud/ https://tidbits.com/2016/08/04/kagi-shuts-down-after-falling...

freediver 5y ago
#nopressure
Youden 5y ago
The name reminded me of Kägi, a Swiss chocolate wafer: https://www.kaegi.com/en/ https://www.kaegi.com/en/
Taniwha 5y ago
Yeah, that was my thought too
zmb_ 5y ago
This brought back memories. The first money I ever made from software as a teenager was through Kagi. It was some Mac utility shareware apps written in REALbasic around the year 2000.
- ben_w 5y ago
  REALbasic? Hmm, if it was about 2006 I’d wonder if it was some of my creations. Long time since I did shareware in any language, though. Something like £2k total takings, I wasn’t good at business.

gkasev 5y ago

There have been a couple of discussions on HN lately [0][1] about the current state of search engine results, be it served by Google, Bing, DDG or other. Also, it seems like there is a lot of work on search engine alternatives as in the case of Kagi and also here [2] to name but a few. Of all alternatives, Kagi seems to be off to a very good start and I personally am a very happy beta user. What I have not seen so far being discussed anywhere, though, is the Willingness to Pay [3] for a search engine alternative, say like Kagi. What do you think is an acceptable monthly subscription price? What do you think is an expensive price? What do you think is a prohibitively expensive price? Here is my take on those questions: 5$, 10$, 20$. UPDATE: I'll summarize all answers and post the results here for reference. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29782186 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29782186 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29772136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29772136 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29690877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29690877 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willingness_to_pay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willingness_to_pay

machiaweliczny 5y ago
I could imagine paying even up to $100+ but only for niche use-cases (finance data, fiding experts/employees). I would like ability to create plugins for search usecases and for example take 20% cut, basically allow for search app store. I wonder if it would work.
- azeirah 5y ago
  The idea of search plugins for specific use-cases sounds incredibly incredibly interesting!
leiferksn 5y ago
I would say for general purposes (casual everyday searches) - anything between 5$ and 10$ / month would be a good price for me. This is of course dependent on the quality of the results - it has to be a real service and not a marketing platform. Most of the single user licenses for web services like github, dropbox are between 5-10$, so the search engine had better deliver quality results, if it requires payments.

xvilka 5y ago

I also recommend to think about something like Nigma[1] (Russian metasearch engine) had done before, something along the lines of Wolfram Alpha - mathematics, physics, chemistry. It's possible to integrate with something like Sage Math for this purpose, should not be hard but would be immensely useful for many. [1] https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9D%D0%B8%D0%B3%D0%BC%D0%B0 https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9D%D0%B8%D0%B3%D0%BC%D0%...

u-rate 5y ago

People pay for VPNs but continue using the web with their normal accounts, thinking their privacy is protected. A private search engine would be a much better way to protect the privacy.

tmsbrg 5y ago

It seems the trend lately for new services to be built with rather high monthly fees. From the FAQ: "We plan to offer entry level plans for as low as $10/month, unlimited plan at around $20/mo as well as make bundles (to include Kagi email and other services), family plans and annual payment discounts available." I have to say I support a lot of these initiatives, but I can't help but think altogether they're creating a division of the web into premium services the rich can afford, and low quality services for the masses. Most of the world doesn't have the silicon valley salaries where $10/month is considered low. I feel like there should be an ideological consideration as well to make better services accessible to as many people as possible. Just my 2 cents.

muskmusk 5y ago
> I have to say I support a lot of these initiatives, but I can't help but think altogether they're creating a division of the web into premium services the rich can afford, and low quality services for the masses What do you mean? Like cars, houses, restaurants, groceries and almost literally everything else on the planet? :)
freediver 5y ago
> but I can't help but think altogether they're creating a division of the web into premium services the rich can afford If I may, there is huge complexity at hand here. It is one thing to offer a meditation app for $2/mo, where its peak complexity is changing colors on the screen. It is entire different to be able to offer the entire internet searchable in less than 500ms in the palm of your hand. The ability to offer that at $20-30/mo with robust privacy protection is frankly a miracle. Second factor, is that Kagi is bootstrapped and our priorities are quality of services offered, not the number of users. And knowing what I know, it is simply not economically viable to do this at a lower price point and hope for sustainability of the business. Finally, the price is only one side of equation, the other is value. The question is will you be getting enough value for your money? For me, the ability for my children to use a search engine without being bombarded with ads from an early age has a lot of value. I already pay $15/mo for YouTube Premium for the same reason. I understand that not every parent is in this position to choose, but many are. Having said all that I do not pretend that Kagi is designed to be for everyone, like Google is. It is a premium service for a reason - the cost of providing the quality that we provide is simply what it is, and we clearly said no to the ads from the get-go. Remember that the main reason most of the mainstream web is free are ads. The ideological consideration you refer to is something I agree with, but that role is on governments to fullfill IMO. I do not think they will anytime soon so I am doing what I can. Access to information like access to water should be part of public infrastructure and we miss the latter in the modern society (as public libraries are not enough anymore). We can easily get into the realm of politics here so I choose to stop :)

tut-urut-utut 5y ago

While they claim they support privacy now, I'm still hesitant to create an account there. I can even use Google to search semi anonymously, given a proper ad-blocker, but creating an account to use a search engine? So I need to be fully logged in and identifiable and all my queries are associated to my accounts without any doubt because I signed in? No thanks. I don't want that some hidden ToS change or future acquisition expose all my searches in the future, even if current search engine operates in a good fate.

no_time 5y ago
Founder replied to me about the exact same issue in an older thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29672560 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29672560 I suppose it's the fault of online payment infrastructure more than them. Sure, they could do it the Mullvad way and accept envelopes with cash and an UID but that probably wouldnt scale.

kajiryoji 5y ago

Happy user here, but has anyone tested kagi vs devonagent?