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You're not duckduckgo's customer either (their primary revenue source is keyword based advertising), or the customer of anything else you don't pay for. The on

You're not duckduckgo's customer either (their primary revenue source is keyword based advertising), or the customer of anything else you don't pay for. The only one I know of that at least plans to have a simple two-way relationship with search users as their customers is Kagi. Currently it's in free beta with a waitlist (took a week for me). When they go live they intend it to be a paid, subscription service with no advertising. So far I've found it good, and I'll gladly pay when the time comes.

echelon 5y ago
I hope they penalize websites with heavy tracking or advertising. We might get back to a sane web if this takes off. They can grow their market by offering 10 free searches a day, and I think that would be enough to entice a lot of folks to switch. Offer a paid API, and I'd bet they'd have a real growth story.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  "I hope they penalize websites with heavy tracking or advertising." I hope they give me a easy way, to set my own priorities (but I would choose that option).
  - Closi 5y ago
    I'm on the beta and it has both of these things. You can choose to boost particular sites, or to down-rank sites with trackers.
    - echelon 5y ago
      That's amazing. I can't wait!
      - Closi 5y ago
        I've personally gone back to using Google from being on the Beta, but i'm sure other people will have more success.
krackers 5y ago
>Currently it's in free beta with a waitlist (took a week for me) When did you apply? I filled out their survey at the end of december and haven't even received a confirmation email. I tried again a few weeks back with a gmail address, and still nothing. So I guess at least it's already at Google-level customer service.
- soperj 5y ago
  I heard back pretty promptly.
- omnicognate 5y ago
  Around the new year. No idea how the waitlist is managed. I was pleased at how prompt it was after signing up for the Github Copilot beta several months ago and not having heard a peep out of them.
  - krackers 5y ago
    Very strange then, it almost feels like I've been shadow-banned from a service I haven't even used yet considering that I tried to request an invite with 3 different email domains (to rule out any domain whitelist) on 2 different platforms (to rule out any typeform website issues), waiting at least 3 weeks in between (to rule out any rate-limiting). There doesn't even appear to be any contact email aside from the discord which is also invite-only. Kind of soured me on the whole experience.
    - brightly-salty 5y ago
      I’ve had a similar experience but heard back from the Founder that many of the invites from before January 8th didn’t go through, and that he manually approves a new batch every few weeks now
      - krackers 5y ago
        >heard back from the Founder that many of the invites from before January 8th didn’t go through That makes this situation even weirder. Why not just re-send them, considering that they should have the collected email address sitting right there? If it's a typeform issue, then some sort of message on their site would have been nice. I mean it's one thing if this was a free product, but the fact that they are planning to provide a paid search engine but can't manage the task of sending email invites and don't have any contact address* just ruins any enthusiasm I had of being a customer. * I realize the founder has his email listed in the FAQ page, but emailing the founder for an issue like this seems quite gauche. And besides I did try reaching out on social media but didn't get any response.
Closi 5y ago
I am on Kagi Beta but IMO they do not have a valid monetisation strategy that I would pay for. Their current pricing model is planned to be $30 a month for an 'all you can eat' subscription, or $10 a month for a 'lite' membership that gives you 20 searches per day and then charges you $0.02 per search after that on a pay-as-you-go model (but if you check your search history, you may be suprised how many searches you actually do!). Users who join the $10 lite plan for instance and then do 70 searches a day (I hit much more than this during a full day of programming!) would get hit with an overage bill of $25 at the end of the month, as well as the next months 'lite' charges of $10. On the 70 searches point too, if you search for "business news" and then click the news360 tab to get news results, I believe this is actually counted as 2 searches so would get charged at 4 cents if in the overages category. When I searched up I thought maybe $5 a month, or possibly $10 at a push, but $30+ will be too much for mass market adoption in my opinion. I also think there is an inevitable situation that someone searches a lot and suddenly finds themselves getting a $100 bill after they signed up for $10 a month! Unfortunately there isn't a way around the price too from an architecture perspective because it's a high cost engine to run - the costs are driven by the fact that Kagi uses the paid Google and Bing api's, then adds a bit of it's own index and instant answers, but the Google and Bing API's both charge quite a lot per request (c$0.015 per request). Search quality is usually pretty good (until it isn't), and it's getting better as it's manually tweaked to meet common queries, but the maps search is pretty much unusable. The search doesn't seem to "understand" queries in the same way Google does, particularly ones that are semantically hard (despite the results coming from google, Kagi reshuffles them). The founder, Vlad, seems pretty great though and is very active in the discord community. I really wish them luck, and particularly that they manage to crack the cost/pricing challenge they have. However I have gone back to Google with adblock as my daily driver as I just didn't get the same quality of results, and found myself going back to Google enough times to make it frustrating. I appreciate it is a beta though, and that it will only get better over time.
- freediver 5y ago
  Just a few notes. Search costs money and it seems we needed to get to 2022 to realize that. We made a choice of user = customer so yes the cost is real, and it is suddenly on the user. What they get in return is (at least a promise of) a superior search experience with a product that has many features that Google and similar ad-supported search engines simply never can. Our $10 plan is likely going to give the user 1,000 searches. 80% of users search less than that monthly, even average HN users (who are majority of our beta users). We will also have pay as you go option ($1 per 80 searches) and $30/mo for people who want to support Kagi. I would argue that our monetization strategy is valid as it is the only one that at least has a chance of making the business sustainable. Whether enough people would pay (which is what I think you were getting at) is another matter. Yes our Maps is completely broken now. But at least we are building our own Maps (together with our own Search and a Browser, not an easy feat). The vision is ambitious, I'd love a world where at least a portion of it is realized.
s5300 5y ago
I’d pay a lot of money for 2012 era-ish Google search… Unfortunately, I’m sure they rake in magnitudes more cash from ads than they ever would from subscriptions.
ssss11 5y ago
I agree with the “if you’re not paying, you’re not the customer” mantra. I do believe we should pay (a reasonably small amount! :)) for products that companies provide. It’s the “free” model that got us into this mess.
LordAtlas 5y ago
I don't see many people signing up with the pricing plans they have in mind.

echelon 5y ago

I hope they penalize websites with heavy tracking or advertising. We might get back to a sane web if this takes off. They can grow their market by offering 10 free searches a day, and I think that would be enough to entice a lot of folks to switch. Offer a paid API, and I'd bet they'd have a real growth story.

hutzlibu 5y ago
"I hope they penalize websites with heavy tracking or advertising." I hope they give me a easy way, to set my own priorities (but I would choose that option).
- Closi 5y ago
  I'm on the beta and it has both of these things. You can choose to boost particular sites, or to down-rank sites with trackers.
  - echelon 5y ago
    That's amazing. I can't wait!
    - Closi 5y ago
      I've personally gone back to using Google from being on the Beta, but i'm sure other people will have more success.

krackers 5y ago

>Currently it's in free beta with a waitlist (took a week for me) When did you apply? I filled out their survey at the end of december and haven't even received a confirmation email. I tried again a few weeks back with a gmail address, and still nothing. So I guess at least it's already at Google-level customer service.

soperj 5y ago
I heard back pretty promptly.
omnicognate 5y ago
Around the new year. No idea how the waitlist is managed. I was pleased at how prompt it was after signing up for the Github Copilot beta several months ago and not having heard a peep out of them.
- krackers 5y ago
  Very strange then, it almost feels like I've been shadow-banned from a service I haven't even used yet considering that I tried to request an invite with 3 different email domains (to rule out any domain whitelist) on 2 different platforms (to rule out any typeform website issues), waiting at least 3 weeks in between (to rule out any rate-limiting). There doesn't even appear to be any contact email aside from the discord which is also invite-only. Kind of soured me on the whole experience.
  - brightly-salty 5y ago
    I’ve had a similar experience but heard back from the Founder that many of the invites from before January 8th didn’t go through, and that he manually approves a new batch every few weeks now
    - krackers 5y ago
      >heard back from the Founder that many of the invites from before January 8th didn’t go through That makes this situation even weirder. Why not just re-send them, considering that they should have the collected email address sitting right there? If it's a typeform issue, then some sort of message on their site would have been nice. I mean it's one thing if this was a free product, but the fact that they are planning to provide a paid search engine but can't manage the task of sending email invites and don't have any contact address* just ruins any enthusiasm I had of being a customer. * I realize the founder has his email listed in the FAQ page, but emailing the founder for an issue like this seems quite gauche. And besides I did try reaching out on social media but didn't get any response.

Closi 5y ago

I am on Kagi Beta but IMO they do not have a valid monetisation strategy that I would pay for. Their current pricing model is planned to be $30 a month for an 'all you can eat' subscription, or $10 a month for a 'lite' membership that gives you 20 searches per day and then charges you $0.02 per search after that on a pay-as-you-go model (but if you check your search history, you may be suprised how many searches you actually do!). Users who join the $10 lite plan for instance and then do 70 searches a day (I hit much more than this during a full day of programming!) would get hit with an overage bill of $25 at the end of the month, as well as the next months 'lite' charges of $10. On the 70 searches point too, if you search for "business news" and then click the news360 tab to get news results, I believe this is actually counted as 2 searches so would get charged at 4 cents if in the overages category. When I searched up I thought maybe $5 a month, or possibly $10 at a push, but $30+ will be too much for mass market adoption in my opinion. I also think there is an inevitable situation that someone searches a lot and suddenly finds themselves getting a $100 bill after they signed up for $10 a month! Unfortunately there isn't a way around the price too from an architecture perspective because it's a high cost engine to run - the costs are driven by the fact that Kagi uses the paid Google and Bing api's, then adds a bit of it's own index and instant answers, but the Google and Bing API's both charge quite a lot per request (c$0.015 per request). Search quality is usually pretty good (until it isn't), and it's getting better as it's manually tweaked to meet common queries, but the maps search is pretty much unusable. The search doesn't seem to "understand" queries in the same way Google does, particularly ones that are semantically hard (despite the results coming from google, Kagi reshuffles them). The founder, Vlad, seems pretty great though and is very active in the discord community. I really wish them luck, and particularly that they manage to crack the cost/pricing challenge they have. However I have gone back to Google with adblock as my daily driver as I just didn't get the same quality of results, and found myself going back to Google enough times to make it frustrating. I appreciate it is a beta though, and that it will only get better over time.

freediver 5y ago
Just a few notes. Search costs money and it seems we needed to get to 2022 to realize that. We made a choice of user = customer so yes the cost is real, and it is suddenly on the user. What they get in return is (at least a promise of) a superior search experience with a product that has many features that Google and similar ad-supported search engines simply never can. Our $10 plan is likely going to give the user 1,000 searches. 80% of users search less than that monthly, even average HN users (who are majority of our beta users). We will also have pay as you go option ($1 per 80 searches) and $30/mo for people who want to support Kagi. I would argue that our monetization strategy is valid as it is the only one that at least has a chance of making the business sustainable. Whether enough people would pay (which is what I think you were getting at) is another matter. Yes our Maps is completely broken now. But at least we are building our own Maps (together with our own Search and a Browser, not an easy feat). The vision is ambitious, I'd love a world where at least a portion of it is realized.

s5300 5y ago

I’d pay a lot of money for 2012 era-ish Google search… Unfortunately, I’m sure they rake in magnitudes more cash from ads than they ever would from subscriptions.

ssss11 5y ago

I agree with the “if you’re not paying, you’re not the customer” mantra. I do believe we should pay (a reasonably small amount! :)) for products that companies provide. It’s the “free” model that got us into this mess.

LordAtlas 5y ago

I don't see many people signing up with the pricing plans they have in mind.