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No. Google is an actively hostile experience. Try it without adblock and get a taste of how most people get treated by Google. And for the search results, Kagi
by zargon 5y ago
No. Google is an actively hostile experience. Try it without adblock and get a taste of how most people get treated by Google. And for the search results, Kagi is already better for 90% of my queries.
It's much more difficult now to build a competitive search engine, but saying it's impossible and discussions should be banned is toxic. (And already basically proven wrong with existing competing search engines.)
- fdgsdfogijq 5y agoI think that with current technology, beating google at the scale they run at is impossible. I think with advances it NLP, its possible. But right now, its pie in the sky.
- Kuinox 5y agoI disagree, Kagi is not yet "better in 90% of the queries" than google, it's good enough to not have to launch google in 90% of it's query.
- zargon 5y agoThis is probably true for me, if we also say that 50% of the queries are orders of magnitude higher quality on Kagi.
- omnicognate 5y agoKagi's better than Google for me. Proof is that initially I only had it set up as default search on one device but I've progressively switched them all over out of annoyance with crap google results. I haven't yet had to go to google once to finish a search I started on Kagi.
- lolinder 5y agoIt's substantially better than Google for what I do with it (mostly work-related queries). A few reasons why: * It blocks all the GitHub and Stack Overflow copycat sites out of the box. * I can add additional sites to the block list with two clicks. * It up-ranks (semi-)official documentation like the Python docs or MDN over blog spam sites. * I can manually up-rank sites (and even pin them to the top of the results) if I'd like to see them more often. Kagi is awesome because where Google thinks it can guess what you want, Kagi gives you an easy way to tell it what you want.
- Kuinox 5y agoI already have an extension that's allow me to block, or highlights results on Google or Bing
- buildbot 5y ago+1 kagi was the first alternative engine that has passed all of my random tests, mostly weird cameras and python coding searches…
- mrjin 5y agoBut why would a search engine require an account to use in the first place? Or maybe I took it wrong?
- black_puppydog 5y agoCame here to mention kagi. Very happy user here. The no-spam results make it so much more useful as a tool. Also, "block this site from myresults forever" gives so much more agency to the user than anything Google has release in years. Googles "we know better" just reads as a big middle finger to me.
- tartoran 5y agoWow, they have that? That’s what I always wanted from Google and they never delivered. Im sure they had reasons. I really don’t think they want to empower their users, they are even hostile to search users and content creators, amp comes to mind and am glad it dissapeared already. Meanwhile I’be been using duckduck but i’ll give kagi a go.
- notreallyserio 5y agoWorse, Google used to allow you to block sites but removed the feature a long while back: https://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2013/03/google-discontinues-blocked-sites.html https://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2013/03/google-discontinue... .
- lordnacho 5y agoWhat happens when you ask it how many Ukrainian generals have died? Does it insist on giving you pages and pages about Russian generals, like Google? I was looking for this and it really annoys me how it thinks it knows what I want.
- berkut 5y agoNo, Kagi (unlike Google and DDG) will just stop providing results, it won't make up others with very tenuous links to your search terms like the others do.
- black_puppydog 5y agoJust tried that. I did have to put "ukrainian generals" into quotes (which makes sense, that's how it's supposed to work) but then it just showed me 5 results total, all of which contained exactly that phrase.
- sltkr 5y agoKagi requires users to sign up (even though it's currently free?) which is 1000x more user-hostile than anything Google does and makes it a nonstarter as far as I'm concerned.
- LordAtlas 5y agoAnd they also intend to charge $10 per month (and that's just for 20 searches per day, which is a WTF low number). There's no way I'm paying that kind of money.
- omnicognate 5y agoKagi is intended to be a paid service when it launches. This is something I actively want. It should make them the opposite of user-hostile. Their users will be the source of their revenue so they will need to provide value or lose them. Login is a necessary part of that. I'm happy to take both that inconvenience and the cost.
- Melatonic 5y agoI used it for awhile and did like it quite a bit - I found myself having a bit of anxiety though worrying if I was going to hit the search limit with my more trivial queries. Google really has us psychologically
- lolinder 5y agoIs there a search limit for Kagi during beta? I don't see it documented anywhere, and I've been using it as my primary search engine for a few months and haven't seen any sign of a limit. I wouldn't be surprised if there's some limit to prevent abuse, but it hardly gets in the way of my normal usage.
- ndiddy 5y agoAccording to a discussion I had here previously with a Kagi user, when they go out of beta they plan to offer a $10/month plan with a quota of 20 searches per day (and $0.015 per each additional search), and an unlimited plan for $20-30/month. Additionally, every time you change something related to your search query (such as clicking "Images", changing the sort order, applying filters, or blocking a website) counts as an additional search, so you could go through your quota pretty fast. Apparently all of this is to offset the costs from paying Google and Bing to run searches for them (the site basically takes results from Google and Bing and then combines them together with their own special sauce) but with a pricing model like this it seems like Kagi will remain a niche tool solely used by the wealthy.
- ApolloFortyNine 5y agoEven my grandparents figured out how to scroll by the ads at the top of Google search. Actively hostile is a bit much.
- tonyedgecombe 5y agoI don't think my parents would be able to distinguish between the ads and natural listings.
- Tenoke 5y agoI use Google without AdBlock on my phone daily and it's not quite that different.
- Broken_Hippo 5y agoI use Google without AdBlock whenever I am in a private browser in addition to going without adblock on both my phone and tablet. I agree, it isn't that much different. At least with search, that is.
- notriddle 5y agoKagi is probably a lot more usable, right now. Nobody’s trying to game it. As long as it remains niche, it might actually stay that way indefinitely. I’m just worried about Google taking inspiration from them. I bet whatever “tricks” they use now would get a lot less effective if they did.
- huynhhacnguyen 5y agoDo I have to wait for their invitation to join the beta list before I can try Kagi? The comments here are promising and I tried to take a look for myself but apparently only beta users are allowed in at the moment.
- juanci_to 5y agoYou have to ask for it by submitting a form in their webpage and they send you an invitation to your mail
- jpalomaki 5y agoWhat’s the story behind Kagi - are they somehow related to Google? To my knowledge besides the old experiments with client side search, Google has never allowed (even paid) api access to their search. I thought they did not do this, because it would have allowed somebody to jump start a search engine that might eventually become a competitor. Kagi seems to be open about their Google relationship, so I assume they have agreement in place. This even feels like some experiment from Google to create a premium, paid, search product (like what they did with YouTube).
- jsnell 5y agoAt least Startpage has been serving Google results (via paid API access) for years. There is nothing new about Kagi paying for access to it.