10 ms·

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 i

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
  - NoXero 5y ago
    So how do I apply?
  - aemreunal 5y ago
    As someone who happily pays for many "free" products/services (like DNS service through NextDNS), I am super excited about products like yours, where I can get a better product and more/better features for money. I received my invite this morning and I am super excited to check it out. I wish you all the best of luck and I am really rooting for your success!
    - spurgu 5y ago
      +1, happy paying NextDNS customer here (for 1.5 years now) and recent Kagi user, very happy so far (likely future customer)!
      - Melatonic 5y ago
        Love NextDNS as well - my only gripe with it is that I cant have separate filters and lists for different sets of devices. Would love to have my family on some more basic security and privacy stuff while keeping the advanced and higher false positive based stuff for my devices.
        spurgu 5y ago
        Hmm, what do you mean? I have a number of different profiles, all with unique settings (lists). It's to the right of the NextDNS logo in the UI as a dropdown. Then in the client you choose which profile you want to connect to.
        5y ago
jamesdoe1336 5y ago
Hi Vladamir. If it is possible can you share what is your tech stack specially your database ?
IgorPartola 5y ago
Couple of things: First, price point is 2-4x what I expected. Not saying I wouldn’t be a customer but at $5 unlimited it would be a no brainer for me. Related: I would love to see family pricing. $12-13 price point is just right for me to share with my family with up to six people or some such. Privacy is important. Is it possible to provide a payment system that is anonymous? Cash in the mail? BTC or similar? What is your policy on logging searches? Will your results ever feature ads? Affiliate links? Will you ever attempt to create Kagi Plus social network?
- muhammadusman 5y ago
  Echoing the family plan, I would love to have my family use the search engine but at $10+ per person, it doesn't make sense.
- spurgu 5y ago
  +1 for anonymous payments (Monero please?). I am signed up for the beta with a non-personal email but using traditional payments will throw that semi-anonymity out of the window. What subscription models exist in the crypto world right now, i.e. to automatically charge me every month?
- Melatonic 5y ago
  I agree - I like the idea and so far have liked the beta. But $10 a month is way too much unless there is something that really makes it THAT much better than other search engines. Look at NextDNS for example - they offer it for free under a certain amount of queries and for home use unlimited is 2$ a month. And it has a lot of features, easy and clean interface, plus custom options. I gladly pay for that because its cheap and I can use it with devices off my home network. $10 a month is getting into the territory of streaming video services and those require a hell of a lot of bandwidth and infrastructure to maintain. For business or corporate use though $10 a month / user seems totally applicable.
  - tomdekan 5y ago
    I disagree. I would paid $10 / month as an individual.
jonnycomputer 5y ago
k-ah-gi as in tawdry k-ay-gi as in lady k-aa-gi as in laggy Which one is it?
- freediver 5y ago
  It is ka-gi, like yogi.
  - currency 5y ago
    So... ko-gi? The phoneme used by the letter o in yogi is not something anyone is going to associate with the letter a. There are multiple phonemes often represented by the letter a; the GP is asking which of those is correct. Edit: all of these assume American English pronunciations.
    - jonnycomputer 5y ago
      The explanation that kogi is pronounced like yogi implied to me, limited being that I am, that the 'g' was a so-called hard consonant, not that the vowel sounded like 'oh'. But yes, that does assume American English pronunciation (and for what I know, various other Englishes too).
    - freediver 5y ago
      No sorry for confusion. It is ka-gi, just accented in the same way as yogi.
      - iso1631 5y ago
        "Kah-Gi" or "Kar-Gi"?
        freediver 5y ago
        Perhaps this settles it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig4VTr0rt4Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig4VTr0rt4Q
ptman 5y ago
Consider https://webmonetization.org/ https://webmonetization.org/
stanfordkid 5y ago
How is it better than using a proxy server to access Google?
- flatiron 5y ago
  or whoogle: https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search (which i love btw)
faeyanpiraat 5y ago
How did you manage to crawl the web without any issues? Did you get any angry letters and/or lawyery threats to stop crawling a specific site?
_8j50 5y ago
Cool product. If I was in your innovation team you know what idea I would suggest? Adversarial compatibility! Support indexing internal stuff for enterprises. Let's say I have a kagi enterprise account and my company had integrations setup. When I search for something, I would get results from internal wiki, email , sharepoint, etc... along with internet results. One stop shop for search. I hope you read this and give it serious consideration. You wanna kill google? This is how!
- freediver 5y ago
  > You wanna kill google? This is how! We don't want to kill Google :) Google serves a purpose in the world and it did help enable the modern society to exist, with all its marvels and flaws. Heck, it even enables Kagi to exist! Think of Kagi as a small premium brand, providing a very different search experience. Enterprise search is something that we are remotely thinking about, but frankly we want to focus on providing the best possible consumer experience first, so that individuals and families around the world can enjoy a user-centric, ad-free search experience.
  - _8j50 5y ago
    Thanks for the reply. I am glad you are focused on the mission at hand. I hope you will prove a profitable ad-free search engine is feasible . If you're not going to kill google, at least I hope you humble them by having better quality.
- Melatonic 5y ago
  This is a great idea and lets face it - enterprise subscriptions are where the real money is at.
peakaboo 5y ago
This is awesome. If it works well, I will pay for it without a moments hesitation.
deanc 5y ago
If I can be frank, nothing google has done or is doing with my search data bothers me in the slightest. If it uses my data to help target advertising - so be it. It doesn't bother me either as I use uBlock. So whether I pay or not, the only thing I care about is the quality of my search results. What makes you think you can do better than a company with over 20 years experience, 10s of 1000s of engineers working on their product? I took a skim through the features and google could implement site muting in an instant if they wanted - so this isn't going to get you far in the market. The number one thing that makes google better than anyone else at this is I type in some words and they find the information I need - pretty quickly. I usually wouldn't ask these kinds of questions but I think this is the one of the hardest problems to get right - to impact such a wide number of people. No-one has even come _close_ to taking a dent out of Google in the last 20 years.
- semi-extrinsic 5y ago
  If anyone is able to take a large bite out of Google's search market share, it will be by figuring out how to not drown results in ads, SEO and blogspam. If they can successfully pull that off, it has obvious value.
  - visarga 5y ago
    Easy to detect ads and affiliate links, just down rank all commercial sites. The good sites are all free anyway.
- r_hoods_ghost 5y ago
  Subjectively google's results have got dramatically worse over the past 10 years. Whether this is intentional on google's part because they have decided to prioritise ad revenue over useful results, or if it is because the problem has got much harder because of the increased number of pages and the increased sophistication of spammers is open to question. If the answer is a) then Kagi or another disruptor could undoubtedly produce better search results, and probably in a short period of time, with a small number of decent engineers as there is now a vast body of research and praxis to build on that didn't exist when google was starting up. If the answer is some variant on b) then they're on a hiding to nothing.
nikitaga 5y ago
Since you seem to be using it – what are your thoughts on the Crystal language? Pleasant? Ready for production?
- freediver 5y ago
  I know that the team is having lots of fun with Crystal and the performance is truly amazing. It allows us to run the entire setup very economically.
gostsamo 5y ago
How would you solve the issue of self-censorship when the exact identity of a searcher is known? Can you Guarantee the privacy of searches and that you will never sell search history data?
- freediver 5y ago
  Those are good questions, thank you. I think that a class of people, who ask kind of questions that need absolute guarantee of anonymity (I am thinking terrorists, drug dealers, traffickers etc) are: - Looking for a different thing (because anonymity is not the same as privacy) - Are probably looking at tools that cost much more than Kagi does We are not even interested in serving that market. Having said that: - Kagi does not store search queries nor by definition it is then possible to associate something that does not exist with an account - In general, Kagi does not store or mine user data in any way. Our privacy policy is pretty detailed, I recommend checking it out https://kagi.com/privacy https://kagi.com/privacy The strongest guarantee I can realistically give you that the above is true, is that our business model is simply not dependent on mining or selling user data. And the premise of our entire business would fall apart if the opposite turned out to be true. In other words the alignment of incentives here is as good as it gets. We are not interested in your identity or searches, we are interested in providing the best search product for you, so we can keep you as a paying customer as long as we can. The moment either of the above is not true, you will walk away. It is wonderful to be in this position from a product/business perspective.
  - wootest 5y ago
    I understand the pedagogical example as a stark contrast, but this choice is immediately turning me off the product. Startups and the companies they grow into have spent decades helping themselves to data to track and identify and write clauses into their policies and terms of use to be able to stockpile behavioral data for a potential future "pivot" if nothing else. We are living in a world where it is more based in fact to assume that companies will help themselves to this kind of information under a variety of pretenses than that they won't. The only reason people will assume differently is if they trust the company, the product and the people behind it. The policy seems to be doing its part, but trust needs to be built by every conversation with a potential future customer. If the question that pops up is "how can I be anonymous if I pay you each month", the resulting argumentation should not be able to be construed as "we're sorry, but we're not going to help be your burner phone", which the comment I'm replying to is toeing dangerously close to. People search for many things and it could detail their interests, their current location, their financial troubles. The commitment needs to be "we will never, never, never, ever, do anything like this", and not just "it doesn't make sense for us to do this". Because if someone wanted to build in that sort of tracking, it could "make sense" from a business standpoint to do this in that the data, if collected, has a lot of value on the market. Even if the incentives are indeed aligned to keep the paying customer pleased, we also need to know that if we do walk away, that at that point there will not possibly be anything left as an artifact that a future buyer could do anything with. This assurance will be most effective if it's rooted in trust and values rather than in practical concerns; the practical concerns are valid, but only if they are restraints that have been applied in search of an objective by yourself, instead of "it is not currently in our business plan". (As an extreme example, consider a bank saying "we'd never pick items out of our customers' safe deposit boxes and sell them; it would simply be too much work".) Basically, the facts seem reasonable enough. But you need to work on not coming off like the parent saying "well I'm sorry you want to hide things from me", which is what unprompted bringing up the covering up of criminal activity in response to questions of anonymity and privacy does. I understand that those concerns do come up in thinking responsibly about a product like this from all angles, but making it a part of a discussion with a potential customer disrespects and denigrates their fundamental needs enormously, the same needs that would make them attracted to the product in the first place.
the-dude 5y ago
Hi Vladimir, Thanks for the invite. Please start monetizing : we want to support this effort ( I understand it is a difficult decision ). Would subscribe if reasonable. Register a new HN handle here for comms about Kagi. I see gimples of the future where my search engine behaves/looks differently depending if I am researching IT issues or looking for clothing. Good luck.
- lekevicius 5y ago
  > Register a new HN handle here for comms about Kagi. I think one of the best things about HN is that there are few "corporate" accounts, and founders continue to communicate from their personal accounts.
  - the-dude 5y ago
    I agree with you, though most of those handles do in some way relate to the person and are typically not 'fantasy style'. I didn't mean to suggest 'register hi-kagi-ceo-here'. Maybe 'The Vlad' would work.
    - geenew 5y ago
      vlad_the_imputer Sort of works. Apologies for the joke, it’s the Friday of the first week back.
Tepix 5y ago
Is there a way to prove that i had paid yet remain anonymous (ideally without a session attached to me)? You offer pay-per-use or pay-per-month or both? Also feedback regarding your current website: So there is merely one sentence: It says "Premium search engine where everything on the page matters." Yet, to the left and the right of this sentence are wiggling clouds that don't matter at all and distract the reader. Not ideal.
- skinkestek 5y ago
  After you log in however it is closer to true. Personally I'd almost say I can live fine with not pleasing extreme nitpickers but I think they'll fix it. The important point for me is unlike Google and DDG almost every result on Kagi does contain the thing you search for and if not you can report a bug and get a reply from a real human who will update the behavior. I've seen it multiple times after I joined their chat.
- ovao 5y ago
  The landing page is technically not a search engine, but maybe “every result matters” is better phrasing here.
- rytill 5y ago
  There is a lot more on the current website than that sentence and the clouds.
  - xigoi 5y ago
    OP is contesting the claim that everything on the page matters. If anything on the page doesn't matter, the claim is wrong.
    - dave_sid 5y ago
      It all matters to me. And if it matters to anyone it matters. So the OP must be right.
    - ejb999 5y ago
Pamar 5y ago
Congratulations for what you accomplished so far. Question: I have a little "vanity website" of my oen. Is there a way to make sure it gets included (in full or maybe just some pages) in Kagi searches?
- freediver 5y ago
  Check Teclis [1], this is a demo front to one of our noncommercial indexes, and if your site is such, you can submit it there. [1] http://teclis.com http://teclis.com

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
- NoXero 5y ago
  So how do I apply?
- aemreunal 5y ago
  As someone who happily pays for many "free" products/services (like DNS service through NextDNS), I am super excited about products like yours, where I can get a better product and more/better features for money. I received my invite this morning and I am super excited to check it out. I wish you all the best of luck and I am really rooting for your success!
  - spurgu 5y ago
    +1, happy paying NextDNS customer here (for 1.5 years now) and recent Kagi user, very happy so far (likely future customer)!
    - Melatonic 5y ago
      Love NextDNS as well - my only gripe with it is that I cant have separate filters and lists for different sets of devices. Would love to have my family on some more basic security and privacy stuff while keeping the advanced and higher false positive based stuff for my devices.
      - spurgu 5y ago
        Hmm, what do you mean? I have a number of different profiles, all with unique settings (lists). It's to the right of the NextDNS logo in the UI as a dropdown. Then in the client you choose which profile you want to connect to.
        5y ago

jamesdoe1336 5y ago

Hi Vladamir. If it is possible can you share what is your tech stack specially your database ?

IgorPartola 5y ago

Couple of things: First, price point is 2-4x what I expected. Not saying I wouldn’t be a customer but at $5 unlimited it would be a no brainer for me. Related: I would love to see family pricing. $12-13 price point is just right for me to share with my family with up to six people or some such. Privacy is important. Is it possible to provide a payment system that is anonymous? Cash in the mail? BTC or similar? What is your policy on logging searches? Will your results ever feature ads? Affiliate links? Will you ever attempt to create Kagi Plus social network?

muhammadusman 5y ago
Echoing the family plan, I would love to have my family use the search engine but at $10+ per person, it doesn't make sense.
spurgu 5y ago
+1 for anonymous payments (Monero please?). I am signed up for the beta with a non-personal email but using traditional payments will throw that semi-anonymity out of the window. What subscription models exist in the crypto world right now, i.e. to automatically charge me every month?
Melatonic 5y ago
I agree - I like the idea and so far have liked the beta. But $10 a month is way too much unless there is something that really makes it THAT much better than other search engines. Look at NextDNS for example - they offer it for free under a certain amount of queries and for home use unlimited is 2$ a month. And it has a lot of features, easy and clean interface, plus custom options. I gladly pay for that because its cheap and I can use it with devices off my home network. $10 a month is getting into the territory of streaming video services and those require a hell of a lot of bandwidth and infrastructure to maintain. For business or corporate use though $10 a month / user seems totally applicable.
- tomdekan 5y ago
  I disagree. I would paid $10 / month as an individual.

jonnycomputer 5y ago

k-ah-gi as in tawdry k-ay-gi as in lady k-aa-gi as in laggy Which one is it?

freediver 5y ago
It is ka-gi, like yogi.
- currency 5y ago
  So... ko-gi? The phoneme used by the letter o in yogi is not something anyone is going to associate with the letter a. There are multiple phonemes often represented by the letter a; the GP is asking which of those is correct. Edit: all of these assume American English pronunciations.
  - jonnycomputer 5y ago
    The explanation that kogi is pronounced like yogi implied to me, limited being that I am, that the 'g' was a so-called hard consonant, not that the vowel sounded like 'oh'. But yes, that does assume American English pronunciation (and for what I know, various other Englishes too).
  - freediver 5y ago
    No sorry for confusion. It is ka-gi, just accented in the same way as yogi.
    - iso1631 5y ago
      "Kah-Gi" or "Kar-Gi"?
      - freediver 5y ago
        Perhaps this settles it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig4VTr0rt4Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig4VTr0rt4Q

ptman 5y ago

Consider https://webmonetization.org/ https://webmonetization.org/

stanfordkid 5y ago

How is it better than using a proxy server to access Google?

flatiron 5y ago
or whoogle: https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search (which i love btw)

faeyanpiraat 5y ago

How did you manage to crawl the web without any issues? Did you get any angry letters and/or lawyery threats to stop crawling a specific site?

_8j50 5y ago

Cool product. If I was in your innovation team you know what idea I would suggest? Adversarial compatibility! Support indexing internal stuff for enterprises. Let's say I have a kagi enterprise account and my company had integrations setup. When I search for something, I would get results from internal wiki, email , sharepoint, etc... along with internet results. One stop shop for search. I hope you read this and give it serious consideration. You wanna kill google? This is how!

freediver 5y ago
> You wanna kill google? This is how! We don't want to kill Google :) Google serves a purpose in the world and it did help enable the modern society to exist, with all its marvels and flaws. Heck, it even enables Kagi to exist! Think of Kagi as a small premium brand, providing a very different search experience. Enterprise search is something that we are remotely thinking about, but frankly we want to focus on providing the best possible consumer experience first, so that individuals and families around the world can enjoy a user-centric, ad-free search experience.
- _8j50 5y ago
  Thanks for the reply. I am glad you are focused on the mission at hand. I hope you will prove a profitable ad-free search engine is feasible . If you're not going to kill google, at least I hope you humble them by having better quality.
Melatonic 5y ago
This is a great idea and lets face it - enterprise subscriptions are where the real money is at.

peakaboo 5y ago

This is awesome. If it works well, I will pay for it without a moments hesitation.

deanc 5y ago

If I can be frank, nothing google has done or is doing with my search data bothers me in the slightest. If it uses my data to help target advertising - so be it. It doesn't bother me either as I use uBlock. So whether I pay or not, the only thing I care about is the quality of my search results. What makes you think you can do better than a company with over 20 years experience, 10s of 1000s of engineers working on their product? I took a skim through the features and google could implement site muting in an instant if they wanted - so this isn't going to get you far in the market. The number one thing that makes google better than anyone else at this is I type in some words and they find the information I need - pretty quickly. I usually wouldn't ask these kinds of questions but I think this is the one of the hardest problems to get right - to impact such a wide number of people. No-one has even come _close_ to taking a dent out of Google in the last 20 years.

semi-extrinsic 5y ago
If anyone is able to take a large bite out of Google's search market share, it will be by figuring out how to not drown results in ads, SEO and blogspam. If they can successfully pull that off, it has obvious value.
- visarga 5y ago
  Easy to detect ads and affiliate links, just down rank all commercial sites. The good sites are all free anyway.
r_hoods_ghost 5y ago
Subjectively google's results have got dramatically worse over the past 10 years. Whether this is intentional on google's part because they have decided to prioritise ad revenue over useful results, or if it is because the problem has got much harder because of the increased number of pages and the increased sophistication of spammers is open to question. If the answer is a) then Kagi or another disruptor could undoubtedly produce better search results, and probably in a short period of time, with a small number of decent engineers as there is now a vast body of research and praxis to build on that didn't exist when google was starting up. If the answer is some variant on b) then they're on a hiding to nothing.

nikitaga 5y ago

Since you seem to be using it – what are your thoughts on the Crystal language? Pleasant? Ready for production?

freediver 5y ago
I know that the team is having lots of fun with Crystal and the performance is truly amazing. It allows us to run the entire setup very economically.

gostsamo 5y ago

How would you solve the issue of self-censorship when the exact identity of a searcher is known? Can you Guarantee the privacy of searches and that you will never sell search history data?

freediver 5y ago
Those are good questions, thank you. I think that a class of people, who ask kind of questions that need absolute guarantee of anonymity (I am thinking terrorists, drug dealers, traffickers etc) are: - Looking for a different thing (because anonymity is not the same as privacy) - Are probably looking at tools that cost much more than Kagi does We are not even interested in serving that market. Having said that: - Kagi does not store search queries nor by definition it is then possible to associate something that does not exist with an account - In general, Kagi does not store or mine user data in any way. Our privacy policy is pretty detailed, I recommend checking it out https://kagi.com/privacy https://kagi.com/privacy The strongest guarantee I can realistically give you that the above is true, is that our business model is simply not dependent on mining or selling user data. And the premise of our entire business would fall apart if the opposite turned out to be true. In other words the alignment of incentives here is as good as it gets. We are not interested in your identity or searches, we are interested in providing the best search product for you, so we can keep you as a paying customer as long as we can. The moment either of the above is not true, you will walk away. It is wonderful to be in this position from a product/business perspective.
- wootest 5y ago
  I understand the pedagogical example as a stark contrast, but this choice is immediately turning me off the product. Startups and the companies they grow into have spent decades helping themselves to data to track and identify and write clauses into their policies and terms of use to be able to stockpile behavioral data for a potential future "pivot" if nothing else. We are living in a world where it is more based in fact to assume that companies will help themselves to this kind of information under a variety of pretenses than that they won't. The only reason people will assume differently is if they trust the company, the product and the people behind it. The policy seems to be doing its part, but trust needs to be built by every conversation with a potential future customer. If the question that pops up is "how can I be anonymous if I pay you each month", the resulting argumentation should not be able to be construed as "we're sorry, but we're not going to help be your burner phone", which the comment I'm replying to is toeing dangerously close to. People search for many things and it could detail their interests, their current location, their financial troubles. The commitment needs to be "we will never, never, never, ever, do anything like this", and not just "it doesn't make sense for us to do this". Because if someone wanted to build in that sort of tracking, it could "make sense" from a business standpoint to do this in that the data, if collected, has a lot of value on the market. Even if the incentives are indeed aligned to keep the paying customer pleased, we also need to know that if we do walk away, that at that point there will not possibly be anything left as an artifact that a future buyer could do anything with. This assurance will be most effective if it's rooted in trust and values rather than in practical concerns; the practical concerns are valid, but only if they are restraints that have been applied in search of an objective by yourself, instead of "it is not currently in our business plan". (As an extreme example, consider a bank saying "we'd never pick items out of our customers' safe deposit boxes and sell them; it would simply be too much work".) Basically, the facts seem reasonable enough. But you need to work on not coming off like the parent saying "well I'm sorry you want to hide things from me", which is what unprompted bringing up the covering up of criminal activity in response to questions of anonymity and privacy does. I understand that those concerns do come up in thinking responsibly about a product like this from all angles, but making it a part of a discussion with a potential customer disrespects and denigrates their fundamental needs enormously, the same needs that would make them attracted to the product in the first place.

the-dude 5y ago

Hi Vladimir, Thanks for the invite. Please start monetizing : we want to support this effort ( I understand it is a difficult decision ). Would subscribe if reasonable. Register a new HN handle here for comms about Kagi. I see gimples of the future where my search engine behaves/looks differently depending if I am researching IT issues or looking for clothing. Good luck.

lekevicius 5y ago
> Register a new HN handle here for comms about Kagi. I think one of the best things about HN is that there are few "corporate" accounts, and founders continue to communicate from their personal accounts.
- the-dude 5y ago
  I agree with you, though most of those handles do in some way relate to the person and are typically not 'fantasy style'. I didn't mean to suggest 'register hi-kagi-ceo-here'. Maybe 'The Vlad' would work.
  - geenew 5y ago
    vlad_the_imputer Sort of works. Apologies for the joke, it’s the Friday of the first week back.

Tepix 5y ago

Is there a way to prove that i had paid yet remain anonymous (ideally without a session attached to me)? You offer pay-per-use or pay-per-month or both? Also feedback regarding your current website: So there is merely one sentence: It says "Premium search engine where everything on the page matters." Yet, to the left and the right of this sentence are wiggling clouds that don't matter at all and distract the reader. Not ideal.

skinkestek 5y ago
After you log in however it is closer to true. Personally I'd almost say I can live fine with not pleasing extreme nitpickers but I think they'll fix it. The important point for me is unlike Google and DDG almost every result on Kagi does contain the thing you search for and if not you can report a bug and get a reply from a real human who will update the behavior. I've seen it multiple times after I joined their chat.
ovao 5y ago
The landing page is technically not a search engine, but maybe “every result matters” is better phrasing here.
rytill 5y ago
There is a lot more on the current website than that sentence and the clouds.
- xigoi 5y ago
  OP is contesting the claim that everything on the page matters. If anything on the page doesn't matter, the claim is wrong.
  - dave_sid 5y ago
    It all matters to me. And if it matters to anyone it matters. So the OP must be right.
  - ejb999 5y ago

Pamar 5y ago

Congratulations for what you accomplished so far. Question: I have a little "vanity website" of my oen. Is there a way to make sure it gets included (in full or maybe just some pages) in Kagi searches?

freediver 5y ago
Check Teclis [1], this is a demo front to one of our noncommercial indexes, and if your site is such, you can submit it there. [1] http://teclis.com http://teclis.com