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I debated bringing up Kagi at the top level here, since I already commented on it in a reply, but honestly I really want them to succeed and shit like this is w

I debated bringing up Kagi at the top level here, since I already commented on it in a reply, but honestly I really want them to succeed and shit like this is why. It's a paid search service, and I'm honestly really happy with that distinction and what it entails. Being paid means that they can deliver on and support features that users can use to get the best results for them, without worrying how those features may affect potential advertisers and their opinions of the service. For example, you can block a whole site from your search results - and it's an easy-to-find button directly in the search results, not hidden deep within some settings or done via a manually-installed extension. They already deprioritize a whole lot of "junk" sites -- for example I very rarely see the kinds of technical results that are just reposts of Stack Overflow but laden down with their own ads, and if I do see them I can nuke the site from orbit, never to be seen again. They are working out the kinks with the pricing scheme currently, but I've always found the plans fair and very transparent. If you are interested in good search and potentially giving the industry a bit of a hint that search is important enough to pay for, and all this advertiser-prioritized bullshit is unacceptable, I can wholeheartedly endorse them.

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
"Kagi Search includes anonymized requests to traditional search indexes like Google and Bing as well as sources like Wikipedia, DeepL, and other APIs." https://help.kagi.com/kagi/why-kagi/kagi-vs-brave.html https://help.kagi.com/kagi/why-kagi/kagi-vs-brave.html If many users all send their search queries through a proxy that forwwards them to, say, Google, then one can argue these queries are "anonymised" to some extent. This has been tried. But AFAIK, no one has ever tried to charge money for it. In 2003, there was Scroogle which lasted for almost 10 years and was reputedly forwarding hundreds of thousands of searches per day. Scroogle used to have its own Wikipedia page before it was deleted then merged into the "Criticisms_of_Google" Wikipedia page. https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/privacy-what-should-google-do/ https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/privacy-what-should-google... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AScroogle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AScroogle In 2010, there was GoogleSharing, a Firefox plugin. It did not last very long and unlike Scroogle I cannot recall any explanation was ever given why it was shut down. https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2010/10/04/a-better-way-to-hide-from-google/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2010/10/04/a-bett... Criticisms of Scroogle or GoogleSharing might include having to trust the people operating the proxy servers. With respect to continuation of ad-free, no BS service and with respect to privacy. For example, if operator gets a strongly-worded letter on law firm letterhead then will he share a user's search results. What if he receives a directive from some legal authority demanding that a user's queries be monitored and/or preserved. Will he notify the user. Will he fight such requests. How good are his lawyers. Does he even have any that are prepared to handle these matters. The same issues apply to Kagi. Being a paid service might actually improve these trust problems, assuming there is a contract with the user. The last time I looked for Kagi's terms, it was not reassuring. What does Kagi promise to do or refrain from doing. If Kagi agrees to zero liability for almost anything, then to me that's a red flag. Why would anyone trust him. At the very least, users should be able to sue for up to the amount of the fees they have paid if Kagi breaches the agreement. NB. I am not for or against Kagi. I like the proxy server idea and wish there were more options to use proxies. However I do not agree that merely paying for web search solves all the problems. I wrote scripts for own use that search multiple indexes, filter out garbage and combine results into a simple, minimalist SERP with unprefixed URLs suitable for a text-only browser. For me, that addresses the paid placement ads and ranking algorithm problems. As for the privacy problems, I cannot find anything that promises Kagi will not collect data about users. The same problem of trust as in 2003 through 2012 exists today. Arguably things have gotten worse. As we've seen from so-called "tech" companies offering "pay to stop the ads" subscriptions, paying fees does not stop the data collection. It does not solve the privacy problems. Perhaps if the search engine operator was actually bound by an agreement or laws that prohibited it from collecting data or restricted its use of data. But even with that, how does one detect non-compliance.
p-e-w 4y ago
Can I use Kagi without linking any real-world identifiers (including credit card details) to my search queries in any way? I'm very much interested in a high-quality search engine, and certainly willing to pay for it, but unless the above condition is satisfied, it's a non-starter for me.
- runnerup 4y ago
  Privacy.com might help
  - p-e-w 4y ago
    Privacy.com is US only. And of course, Privacy.com "virtual cards" are still linked to your real-world identity.
    - aliasxneo 4y ago
      How would it get tied to you from the search engine perspective? You can fill in fake information with a Privacy card. They'd have to do some pretty intense investigation to somehow tie the card number back to you...just to sell your information. Seems unproductive.
      - doubtfulcan 3y ago
        A single leak could ruin your social relationships. Extortion bots are untiring and neverending. Just a moment ago our countries largest mental health institution had an IT-catastrophe, and thousands of influental people immediately got automatically extorted by bots.
- freeAgent 4y ago
  Their privacy policy is here: https://kagi.com/privacy https://kagi.com/privacy The short answer to your question is: yes, you can use it without linking any real-world identifiers to your search queries. That is explicitly stated in the linked privacy policy. With that said, I guess it's possible that they are violating their own privacy policy. That seems like a bad idea from a legal perspective, and I don't have any reason to suspect they're lying, so I'm not too worried about it.
colordrops 4y ago
> They are working out the kinks with the pricing scheme You mean being way too expensive? I appreciate them wanting to stay afloat but they need to bring the cost per search down drastically. They are doing something wrong behind the scenes with regards to spend or optimization.
- wastewastewaste 4y ago
  yea, the tool tip says "200 searches is enough for 99% of Internet users", but I doubt their target demographic is the 99% that don't need more.
  - freediver 4y ago
    You are correct, Kagi current users are mostly from the remaining 1%. However that plan was made to attract the remaining 99% Internet users to Kagi (and the plan is more than sufficient for their needs).
    - Ferret7446 3y ago
      I'm skeptical that those 99% would ever be interested in Kagi's value proposition at all. Kagi is a niche product in the contemporary context of ad funded free search engines, and it would have to survive until the other side of the adoption curve before it can reliably sell itself to the average person.
      - freediver 3y ago
        You may be right, but there was only one way for us to find out :)
  - helpfulclippy 4y ago
    Just a datapoint, but I feel like I do a lot of searches… I’m always looking stuff up, and I’m also in the habit of using my search engine as a lazy form of autocomplete for urls. I apparently do about 700 searches a month according to Kagi. If I were on the basic plan, I think that would mean I’d be paying $5/mo. + $0.015/search * (700-200) searches/mo. = $12.50/mo. For what search is worth to me, that seems reasonable. (Or I guess more to the point, how much I value a relationship where I’m the customer, rather than companies expressly interested in using psychological manipulation to influence my behavior…)
ianstormtaylor 4y ago
The best thing about Kagi I've found from trying it recently is that it's results are actually really good. Every time I'd tried DuckDuckGo over the years I found myself having to switch back to Google because I was never sure that there weren't better results going missing. Whereas Kagi often ends up with better rankings than Google—eg. Goodreads, which is great for real reviews, gets placed above all the random booksellers websites.
Zetaphor 4y ago
For those interested in something self hosted and open source, try SearXNG. I've hosting an instance from my NAS for over a year, it's been excellent, and I retain full control over my search history (or lack thereof)
- chuchana 3y ago
  searxng.org
xlii 4y ago
I’ve been using Kagi for multiple months and due to advocacy I made few people pay for it too, but I’m completely disheartened by their business model. The whole explanation of the recent “we want to stay afloat” was weird, unexpected (price doubling with my usage, to 20$/mo) and felt untrue (ordinary user doing 30 searches per day?). I felt like it was written by Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler - made sense but also very abstract and shifting responsibility to the customer. In the end I ran stats how many of Kagi results were on spot (i.e. weren’t repeated in other search engines). It was around half, probably ones that I “didn’t pay for”. I was ready to move back to DDG but an acquaintance recommended Brave search to me (which has its own index). I was reluctant to use it due controversial opinions about them. Not only I found it more pleasant to use, but also the results are (in my opinion) slightly better than Kagis. Edit: To provide additional context - I was using Kagi as daily driver, and I make 200-500 searches per day (that includes duplicate queries to other search engines)
- ianstormtaylor 4y ago
  Not saying you're wrong, but they grandfathered me on the $10/mo plan with the new pricing changes, and that would cover your usage. I think on the new plans 30 searches a day would come out to $13/month. I know it may sound like a lot (and definitely is a lot for some folks), but when I think about it as literally being the window to a huge amount of knowledge I take in, the fact that it's way less than Adobe products, and similar to things like GitHub, Figma, Notion, Airtable, etc. feels pretty reasonable.
  - easygenes 4y ago
    I've tried Kagi as primary search for a few months and used DDG as primary for a long time before that. Recently I default to using phind.com. Don't think they'll be able to stay free forever, but as it is the mix of free access to GPT-4 and the focus on being developer-friendly makes it feel much better than alternatives (perplexity.ai being the closest competitor, but not feeling quite right for me).
    - easygenes 3y ago
srge 4y ago
I also use Kagi and I can confirm that it’s great. I am using Google now maybe still several times a week and most of the time the results are not even better. I still think it’s too expensive though and I wish prices would come down.
chillfox 4y ago
Haven't tried Kagi, but I can highly recommend you.com. It allows quite a bit of customization and has been really solid for the last year+ that I have been using it, I only ever go back to Google for thesaurus/dictionary lookup searches.
CrendKing 4y ago
You need to realize that you like Kagi exactly because it has NOT been "succeeded", and you start to dislike DDG because it finally picks up popularity. Anything in the world that's used by large amount of users are guaranteed to piss off some portion of them, because they can only focus on limited amount of features. Google had been like that. Firefox had been like that. When 70% of Firefox users are non-techies, Firefox has to start focus on the privacy niche to survive. Then the rest 30% vocal techies all start to protest and saying Mozilla has lost its direction and hope to regain market share. When Kagi starts to gain popularity, I guarantee you they will start to polarize on their features, some of which you won't like, regardless of their business model, because the (majority) users they are catering to are also paid users, same as you. Only when they have only small amount of users could all of such be homogeneous enough so that every single feature they dish out is something you like.
- rippercushions 4y ago
  Not the previous poster, but I'm a paid subscriber of Kagi and was previously a heavy user of DDG. The key difference that the previous poster outlined and you're missing is that with Kagi, you're the customer, while with DDG, you're the product. Kagi is thus incentivized to improve their offering to better fit your needs as a user, while DDG is incentivized to better serve their customers the advertisers.
  - fsckboy 3y ago
    neither the previous poster, but I'm not missing what was said, but are you missing that paying a subscription for something, if it becomes popular, becomes an irresistible audience to also advertise to? Have you seen Amazon Prime video lately? it becomes more and more festooned with ads, like happened to cable TV. Pay a subscription, and watch ads, or promotions, or product placements. They're drunk on it.
    - rippercushions 3y ago
      Kagi doesn't have any ads, and serves an audience that is so opposed to ads that they'll pay for the privilege. Sure, in 10 or 20 years that may change, but for now I don't seem them changing that and taking away their single biggest differentiator.
manmal 4y ago
I think Kagi is great, but I’m paying on the order of €10 per month and was suddenly told yesterday that I exceeded my 1k requests quota. That’s not a great way of dealing with paying customers. Google warned me multiple times before they hiked my Workspace price. I’m _this_ close to going back to DDG with the occasional Google drilldown.
- freediver 3y ago
  1000 searches are included in the $10 plan. Currently you are offered the option to pay for additional searches at 1.5 cents per search. Not ideal we know, but someone needs to pay for those, and the notice you received is courtesy (you can also remove it). How would you handle this differently?
  - justinclift 3y ago
    Maybe some kind of warning when getting close to the existing tier limit? eg "You're getting close to your 1000 search limit at your current pricing (800/1000)". I'm trying to think of better wording, but having a hard time of it. ;)
  - mzi 3y ago
    At least my render of the pricing page gives that 700 searches per day are included in the $10 plan, with additional searches priced at ¢1.5. So 1000 searches would be $14.5 plus conversion fee if you don't have a dollar account.
    - manmal 3y ago
      It's 700 per month, not per day.
      - mzi 3y ago
        Ah, yes! That was a mistype from me, I meant to echo the previous comment but lower the count.
  - 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nltrf 3y ago
I would use them if you could pay anonymously. Using a search engine where every query is tied to my credit card is not for me.
- freediver 3y ago
  Searches are not tied to an account, Kagi does not even log searches. [1] What would be the point when your search history would just be a liability? That is the whole point of the paid search business model. [1] https://kagi.com/privacy https://kagi.com/privacy
  - doubtfulcan 3y ago
    How would Kagi enforce quotas if they can't link searches to the account paying for them?
    - 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
      IP address. The classic example is scholarly/academic journals. Access by subscribing university libraries and corporations is still generally dependent on IP address. It has been this way for as long as I can remember. Early 90s at least. An expected retort might be "But consumer IP addresses are subject to change." True, but sometimes a "static" IP is non-negotiable. For example, in the past if one subscribed to ICANN's zone file access program, which is public information open to access by anyone, not only university libraries or corporations, a static IP address had to be provided. Of course one could use a consumer IP address because those can change infrequently, sometimes on a timescale of years. If it ever changed then one had to execute a new agreement. Perhaps the requirement for a static IP has been dropped but I honestly doubt it. Rate-limiting/access control by IP address is common and straightforward. However so-called "tech" companies have shown they cannot be trusted when collecting information from users. For example, Twitter and Facebook each claimed they were requesting phone numbers from users for "security" reasons but it turned out they were using them for commercial purposes.
      - 3y ago
meitham 3y ago
I’m tired of all these “do no evil” organisations, that we back but once they succeed they give us the middle finger and harm us. Is search engine that hard to self host? Assuming I don’t want to index most of the web, such as non English sites, porn, most news sites. Surely there’s an open source solution someone has written to do that I can run from home!
- aembleton 3y ago
  You can run YaCy from home https://yacy.net/ https://yacy.net/
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
_8j50 3y ago
I don't want them to fail but I have 0 support for Kagi after trying them out. Main reason is they collect PII and have no privacy friendly payment options. They should have gone the way if Mullvad with that. Another reason is requiring an account for search is begging to be tracked but even if that is not an issue, it is sooo annoying having to sign in to search and even more annoying when auto complete for a search takes me to kagi but I no longer have that account so I have to face a login page and then navigate away and redo the search. They made the critical mistake of not keeping it simple. If they wanted profits, why make it hard for people to pay them? If they wanted market share, why not have a free tier so people can try before they buy. They're only staying afloat in tech-circle hype imo.
- freediver 3y ago
  Kagi does not collect PII. You can register with a fake email if you want to. Payment information (if any) is collected by Stripe, not Kagi. How would you keep it simple while running a paid search service with non-trivial search cost?
  - doubtfulcan 3y ago
    As someone with high privacy focus, just having a user id given by stripe, that stripe then can connect to a real person is a liability. Mullvad allows payments in crypto and their site is accessible as an onion service. I know it definitely adds overhead to do both of those things, though personally I wouldn't mind paying a lot of extra for it. I'm not sure which fraction of users are like me though, I might just be an unviable customer
    - freediver 3y ago
      Sure, but also note that it took 14 years for Mullvad to reach the point where it can support all those billing methods. Kagi launched less than a year ago with a small bootstrapped team, building a much more complex product.
      - 3y ago
MagicMoonlight 3y ago
200 searches a month and then having to pay extra per search is a hilariously bad offering. This isn’t 2008 mobile contracts, I don’t want usage caps for basic functionality.
- laniakean 3y ago
  I recently gave Kagi a try after using DDG, and signed up for their $10/month plan. However, I found myself running out of searches within the first 20 days, which left me feeling hesitant about making any additional searches due to the extra cost. While I do want to support Kagi's success, I personally found the cost of $10-15 per month for search to be a bit steep. Perhaps I have unrealistic expectations on how cheap search should be, but for now, I'm not sure if the cost is worth it for me.
soco 3y ago
On a more general note I wonder why everybody is so convinced a paid service will cater to what they want? I can't imagine for my 10$ a month they would implement my bugfix or add that feature I'd love. I'm paying for MS Office or my car as well and boy do I have complaints about them... why would Kagi be any different? The only advantage I can think of is they would be less motivated to search alternative financing - aka advertising. But not even that is a guarantee in the long run...
- yosito 3y ago
  It's about their business model. If their business is to profit off of satisfying customers then they are going to be motivated to satisfy customers. If their business is to profit off of selling advertisements, then they're going to profit off of selling advertisements.
  - soco 3y ago
    Volkswagen business model is to profit off satisfying customers, yet their menu navigation is censored and they were never bothered to change it. How's that working differently for Kagi? Paying Kagi users just got hit with a new price model which judging by the reactions around here was not very welcome. Yet they all keep selling products, both Kagi and Volkswagen, against customer complaints. Can we agree that there's a lot of gray area in the "customer is king" saying?
    - yosito 3y ago
      Not every customer is going to be happy. And few, if any, companies are purely motivated by customer satisfaction. There are limits, especially legally, of what companies can do to satisfy customers.
- freediver 3y ago
  > I can't imagine for my 10$ a month they would implement my bugfix or add that feature I'd love. That is exactly what you can expect from Kagi. Here is user submitted feedback marked as 'Done'. https://kagifeedback.org/?secondaryTag=done https://kagifeedback.org/?secondaryTag=done
JackMorgan 3y ago
I search ~1000 queries/month, and I tried using Google, DDG, and Kagi side by side for the last six months. At this point I'm 100% on Kagi. My last holdout was work using Google, but it's just so frustrating now after using Kagi, I finally switched over. Yeah it's paid, but I am getting the best results and experience. Not everyone needs great search, but I do and I'm willing to pay for it. I just recently got my brother to sign up, he's also gotten so tired of Google and DDG. Already a few days later he's really digging Kagi. I think a lot of the pricing sticker shock is just because we've been price anchored to $0/month for the last twenty years. The $15/month for Kagi is what most people pay for a single coffee and sandwich, which saves them like ~5 minutes making by hand. Kagi probably saves me at least an hour a month, so from an ROI it's at least 12x better than a coffee and sandwich at the shop.
nunez 3y ago
I agree. I was skeptical to use Kagi at first, but since making the jump a few months ago, I'm never looking back. Kagi gives you so much power over your search experience. I don't even have to use site:Reddit.com anymore to find non-SEO-optimized content. It's like using Google in the early 2000s!
AiAi 3y ago
> For example, you can block a whole site from your search results - and it's an easy-to-find button directly in the search results, not hidden deep within some settings or done via a manually-installed extension. I moved to Kagi for this feature. I think that if a search engine does not offer this kind of feature, it does not have the user experience as a priority. This was after getting tired of using "!g" in all my DDG searches because the results were so bad (and with so many "junk" sites).

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago

"Kagi Search includes anonymized requests to traditional search indexes like Google and Bing as well as sources like Wikipedia, DeepL, and other APIs." https://help.kagi.com/kagi/why-kagi/kagi-vs-brave.html https://help.kagi.com/kagi/why-kagi/kagi-vs-brave.html If many users all send their search queries through a proxy that forwwards them to, say, Google, then one can argue these queries are "anonymised" to some extent. This has been tried. But AFAIK, no one has ever tried to charge money for it. In 2003, there was Scroogle which lasted for almost 10 years and was reputedly forwarding hundreds of thousands of searches per day. Scroogle used to have its own Wikipedia page before it was deleted then merged into the "Criticisms_of_Google" Wikipedia page. https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/privacy-what-should-google-do/ https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/privacy-what-should-google... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AScroogle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AScroogle In 2010, there was GoogleSharing, a Firefox plugin. It did not last very long and unlike Scroogle I cannot recall any explanation was ever given why it was shut down. https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2010/10/04/a-better-way-to-hide-from-google/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2010/10/04/a-bett... Criticisms of Scroogle or GoogleSharing might include having to trust the people operating the proxy servers. With respect to continuation of ad-free, no BS service and with respect to privacy. For example, if operator gets a strongly-worded letter on law firm letterhead then will he share a user's search results. What if he receives a directive from some legal authority demanding that a user's queries be monitored and/or preserved. Will he notify the user. Will he fight such requests. How good are his lawyers. Does he even have any that are prepared to handle these matters. The same issues apply to Kagi. Being a paid service might actually improve these trust problems, assuming there is a contract with the user. The last time I looked for Kagi's terms, it was not reassuring. What does Kagi promise to do or refrain from doing. If Kagi agrees to zero liability for almost anything, then to me that's a red flag. Why would anyone trust him. At the very least, users should be able to sue for up to the amount of the fees they have paid if Kagi breaches the agreement. NB. I am not for or against Kagi. I like the proxy server idea and wish there were more options to use proxies. However I do not agree that merely paying for web search solves all the problems. I wrote scripts for own use that search multiple indexes, filter out garbage and combine results into a simple, minimalist SERP with unprefixed URLs suitable for a text-only browser. For me, that addresses the paid placement ads and ranking algorithm problems. As for the privacy problems, I cannot find anything that promises Kagi will not collect data about users. The same problem of trust as in 2003 through 2012 exists today. Arguably things have gotten worse. As we've seen from so-called "tech" companies offering "pay to stop the ads" subscriptions, paying fees does not stop the data collection. It does not solve the privacy problems. Perhaps if the search engine operator was actually bound by an agreement or laws that prohibited it from collecting data or restricted its use of data. But even with that, how does one detect non-compliance.

p-e-w 4y ago

Can I use Kagi without linking any real-world identifiers (including credit card details) to my search queries in any way? I'm very much interested in a high-quality search engine, and certainly willing to pay for it, but unless the above condition is satisfied, it's a non-starter for me.

runnerup 4y ago
Privacy.com might help
- p-e-w 4y ago
  Privacy.com is US only. And of course, Privacy.com "virtual cards" are still linked to your real-world identity.
  - aliasxneo 4y ago
    How would it get tied to you from the search engine perspective? You can fill in fake information with a Privacy card. They'd have to do some pretty intense investigation to somehow tie the card number back to you...just to sell your information. Seems unproductive.
    - doubtfulcan 3y ago
      A single leak could ruin your social relationships. Extortion bots are untiring and neverending. Just a moment ago our countries largest mental health institution had an IT-catastrophe, and thousands of influental people immediately got automatically extorted by bots.
freeAgent 4y ago
Their privacy policy is here: https://kagi.com/privacy https://kagi.com/privacy The short answer to your question is: yes, you can use it without linking any real-world identifiers to your search queries. That is explicitly stated in the linked privacy policy. With that said, I guess it's possible that they are violating their own privacy policy. That seems like a bad idea from a legal perspective, and I don't have any reason to suspect they're lying, so I'm not too worried about it.

colordrops 4y ago

> They are working out the kinks with the pricing scheme You mean being way too expensive? I appreciate them wanting to stay afloat but they need to bring the cost per search down drastically. They are doing something wrong behind the scenes with regards to spend or optimization.

wastewastewaste 4y ago
yea, the tool tip says "200 searches is enough for 99% of Internet users", but I doubt their target demographic is the 99% that don't need more.
- freediver 4y ago
  You are correct, Kagi current users are mostly from the remaining 1%. However that plan was made to attract the remaining 99% Internet users to Kagi (and the plan is more than sufficient for their needs).
  - Ferret7446 3y ago
    I'm skeptical that those 99% would ever be interested in Kagi's value proposition at all. Kagi is a niche product in the contemporary context of ad funded free search engines, and it would have to survive until the other side of the adoption curve before it can reliably sell itself to the average person.
    - freediver 3y ago
      You may be right, but there was only one way for us to find out :)
- helpfulclippy 4y ago
  Just a datapoint, but I feel like I do a lot of searches… I’m always looking stuff up, and I’m also in the habit of using my search engine as a lazy form of autocomplete for urls. I apparently do about 700 searches a month according to Kagi. If I were on the basic plan, I think that would mean I’d be paying $5/mo. + $0.015/search * (700-200) searches/mo. = $12.50/mo. For what search is worth to me, that seems reasonable. (Or I guess more to the point, how much I value a relationship where I’m the customer, rather than companies expressly interested in using psychological manipulation to influence my behavior…)

ianstormtaylor 4y ago

The best thing about Kagi I've found from trying it recently is that it's results are actually really good. Every time I'd tried DuckDuckGo over the years I found myself having to switch back to Google because I was never sure that there weren't better results going missing. Whereas Kagi often ends up with better rankings than Google—eg. Goodreads, which is great for real reviews, gets placed above all the random booksellers websites.

Zetaphor 4y ago

For those interested in something self hosted and open source, try SearXNG. I've hosting an instance from my NAS for over a year, it's been excellent, and I retain full control over my search history (or lack thereof)

chuchana 3y ago
searxng.org

xlii 4y ago

I’ve been using Kagi for multiple months and due to advocacy I made few people pay for it too, but I’m completely disheartened by their business model. The whole explanation of the recent “we want to stay afloat” was weird, unexpected (price doubling with my usage, to 20$/mo) and felt untrue (ordinary user doing 30 searches per day?). I felt like it was written by Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler - made sense but also very abstract and shifting responsibility to the customer. In the end I ran stats how many of Kagi results were on spot (i.e. weren’t repeated in other search engines). It was around half, probably ones that I “didn’t pay for”. I was ready to move back to DDG but an acquaintance recommended Brave search to me (which has its own index). I was reluctant to use it due controversial opinions about them. Not only I found it more pleasant to use, but also the results are (in my opinion) slightly better than Kagis. Edit: To provide additional context - I was using Kagi as daily driver, and I make 200-500 searches per day (that includes duplicate queries to other search engines)

ianstormtaylor 4y ago
Not saying you're wrong, but they grandfathered me on the $10/mo plan with the new pricing changes, and that would cover your usage. I think on the new plans 30 searches a day would come out to $13/month. I know it may sound like a lot (and definitely is a lot for some folks), but when I think about it as literally being the window to a huge amount of knowledge I take in, the fact that it's way less than Adobe products, and similar to things like GitHub, Figma, Notion, Airtable, etc. feels pretty reasonable.
- easygenes 4y ago
  I've tried Kagi as primary search for a few months and used DDG as primary for a long time before that. Recently I default to using phind.com. Don't think they'll be able to stay free forever, but as it is the mix of free access to GPT-4 and the focus on being developer-friendly makes it feel much better than alternatives (perplexity.ai being the closest competitor, but not feeling quite right for me).
  - easygenes 3y ago

srge 4y ago

I also use Kagi and I can confirm that it’s great. I am using Google now maybe still several times a week and most of the time the results are not even better. I still think it’s too expensive though and I wish prices would come down.

chillfox 4y ago

Haven't tried Kagi, but I can highly recommend you.com. It allows quite a bit of customization and has been really solid for the last year+ that I have been using it, I only ever go back to Google for thesaurus/dictionary lookup searches.

CrendKing 4y ago

You need to realize that you like Kagi exactly because it has NOT been "succeeded", and you start to dislike DDG because it finally picks up popularity. Anything in the world that's used by large amount of users are guaranteed to piss off some portion of them, because they can only focus on limited amount of features. Google had been like that. Firefox had been like that. When 70% of Firefox users are non-techies, Firefox has to start focus on the privacy niche to survive. Then the rest 30% vocal techies all start to protest and saying Mozilla has lost its direction and hope to regain market share. When Kagi starts to gain popularity, I guarantee you they will start to polarize on their features, some of which you won't like, regardless of their business model, because the (majority) users they are catering to are also paid users, same as you. Only when they have only small amount of users could all of such be homogeneous enough so that every single feature they dish out is something you like.

rippercushions 4y ago
Not the previous poster, but I'm a paid subscriber of Kagi and was previously a heavy user of DDG. The key difference that the previous poster outlined and you're missing is that with Kagi, you're the customer, while with DDG, you're the product. Kagi is thus incentivized to improve their offering to better fit your needs as a user, while DDG is incentivized to better serve their customers the advertisers.
- fsckboy 3y ago
  neither the previous poster, but I'm not missing what was said, but are you missing that paying a subscription for something, if it becomes popular, becomes an irresistible audience to also advertise to? Have you seen Amazon Prime video lately? it becomes more and more festooned with ads, like happened to cable TV. Pay a subscription, and watch ads, or promotions, or product placements. They're drunk on it.
  - rippercushions 3y ago
    Kagi doesn't have any ads, and serves an audience that is so opposed to ads that they'll pay for the privilege. Sure, in 10 or 20 years that may change, but for now I don't seem them changing that and taking away their single biggest differentiator.

manmal 4y ago

I think Kagi is great, but I’m paying on the order of €10 per month and was suddenly told yesterday that I exceeded my 1k requests quota. That’s not a great way of dealing with paying customers. Google warned me multiple times before they hiked my Workspace price. I’m _this_ close to going back to DDG with the occasional Google drilldown.

freediver 3y ago
1000 searches are included in the $10 plan. Currently you are offered the option to pay for additional searches at 1.5 cents per search. Not ideal we know, but someone needs to pay for those, and the notice you received is courtesy (you can also remove it). How would you handle this differently?
- justinclift 3y ago
  Maybe some kind of warning when getting close to the existing tier limit? eg "You're getting close to your 1000 search limit at your current pricing (800/1000)". I'm trying to think of better wording, but having a hard time of it. ;)
- mzi 3y ago
  At least my render of the pricing page gives that 700 searches per day are included in the $10 plan, with additional searches priced at ¢1.5. So 1000 searches would be $14.5 plus conversion fee if you don't have a dollar account.
  - manmal 3y ago
    It's 700 per month, not per day.
    - mzi 3y ago
      Ah, yes! That was a mistype from me, I meant to echo the previous comment but lower the count.
- 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

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nltrf 3y ago

I would use them if you could pay anonymously. Using a search engine where every query is tied to my credit card is not for me.

freediver 3y ago
Searches are not tied to an account, Kagi does not even log searches. [1] What would be the point when your search history would just be a liability? That is the whole point of the paid search business model. [1] https://kagi.com/privacy https://kagi.com/privacy
- doubtfulcan 3y ago
  How would Kagi enforce quotas if they can't link searches to the account paying for them?
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
    IP address. The classic example is scholarly/academic journals. Access by subscribing university libraries and corporations is still generally dependent on IP address. It has been this way for as long as I can remember. Early 90s at least. An expected retort might be "But consumer IP addresses are subject to change." True, but sometimes a "static" IP is non-negotiable. For example, in the past if one subscribed to ICANN's zone file access program, which is public information open to access by anyone, not only university libraries or corporations, a static IP address had to be provided. Of course one could use a consumer IP address because those can change infrequently, sometimes on a timescale of years. If it ever changed then one had to execute a new agreement. Perhaps the requirement for a static IP has been dropped but I honestly doubt it. Rate-limiting/access control by IP address is common and straightforward. However so-called "tech" companies have shown they cannot be trusted when collecting information from users. For example, Twitter and Facebook each claimed they were requesting phone numbers from users for "security" reasons but it turned out they were using them for commercial purposes.
    - 3y ago

meitham 3y ago

I’m tired of all these “do no evil” organisations, that we back but once they succeed they give us the middle finger and harm us. Is search engine that hard to self host? Assuming I don’t want to index most of the web, such as non English sites, porn, most news sites. Surely there’s an open source solution someone has written to do that I can run from home!

aembleton 3y ago
You can run YaCy from home https://yacy.net/ https://yacy.net/

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

_8j50 3y ago

I don't want them to fail but I have 0 support for Kagi after trying them out. Main reason is they collect PII and have no privacy friendly payment options. They should have gone the way if Mullvad with that. Another reason is requiring an account for search is begging to be tracked but even if that is not an issue, it is sooo annoying having to sign in to search and even more annoying when auto complete for a search takes me to kagi but I no longer have that account so I have to face a login page and then navigate away and redo the search. They made the critical mistake of not keeping it simple. If they wanted profits, why make it hard for people to pay them? If they wanted market share, why not have a free tier so people can try before they buy. They're only staying afloat in tech-circle hype imo.

freediver 3y ago
Kagi does not collect PII. You can register with a fake email if you want to. Payment information (if any) is collected by Stripe, not Kagi. How would you keep it simple while running a paid search service with non-trivial search cost?
- doubtfulcan 3y ago
  As someone with high privacy focus, just having a user id given by stripe, that stripe then can connect to a real person is a liability. Mullvad allows payments in crypto and their site is accessible as an onion service. I know it definitely adds overhead to do both of those things, though personally I wouldn't mind paying a lot of extra for it. I'm not sure which fraction of users are like me though, I might just be an unviable customer
  - freediver 3y ago
    Sure, but also note that it took 14 years for Mullvad to reach the point where it can support all those billing methods. Kagi launched less than a year ago with a small bootstrapped team, building a much more complex product.
    - 3y ago

MagicMoonlight 3y ago

200 searches a month and then having to pay extra per search is a hilariously bad offering. This isn’t 2008 mobile contracts, I don’t want usage caps for basic functionality.

laniakean 3y ago
I recently gave Kagi a try after using DDG, and signed up for their $10/month plan. However, I found myself running out of searches within the first 20 days, which left me feeling hesitant about making any additional searches due to the extra cost. While I do want to support Kagi's success, I personally found the cost of $10-15 per month for search to be a bit steep. Perhaps I have unrealistic expectations on how cheap search should be, but for now, I'm not sure if the cost is worth it for me.

soco 3y ago

On a more general note I wonder why everybody is so convinced a paid service will cater to what they want? I can't imagine for my 10$ a month they would implement my bugfix or add that feature I'd love. I'm paying for MS Office or my car as well and boy do I have complaints about them... why would Kagi be any different? The only advantage I can think of is they would be less motivated to search alternative financing - aka advertising. But not even that is a guarantee in the long run...

yosito 3y ago
It's about their business model. If their business is to profit off of satisfying customers then they are going to be motivated to satisfy customers. If their business is to profit off of selling advertisements, then they're going to profit off of selling advertisements.
- soco 3y ago
  Volkswagen business model is to profit off satisfying customers, yet their menu navigation is censored and they were never bothered to change it. How's that working differently for Kagi? Paying Kagi users just got hit with a new price model which judging by the reactions around here was not very welcome. Yet they all keep selling products, both Kagi and Volkswagen, against customer complaints. Can we agree that there's a lot of gray area in the "customer is king" saying?
  - yosito 3y ago
    Not every customer is going to be happy. And few, if any, companies are purely motivated by customer satisfaction. There are limits, especially legally, of what companies can do to satisfy customers.
freediver 3y ago
> I can't imagine for my 10$ a month they would implement my bugfix or add that feature I'd love. That is exactly what you can expect from Kagi. Here is user submitted feedback marked as 'Done'. https://kagifeedback.org/?secondaryTag=done https://kagifeedback.org/?secondaryTag=done

JackMorgan 3y ago

I search ~1000 queries/month, and I tried using Google, DDG, and Kagi side by side for the last six months. At this point I'm 100% on Kagi. My last holdout was work using Google, but it's just so frustrating now after using Kagi, I finally switched over. Yeah it's paid, but I am getting the best results and experience. Not everyone needs great search, but I do and I'm willing to pay for it. I just recently got my brother to sign up, he's also gotten so tired of Google and DDG. Already a few days later he's really digging Kagi. I think a lot of the pricing sticker shock is just because we've been price anchored to $0/month for the last twenty years. The $15/month for Kagi is what most people pay for a single coffee and sandwich, which saves them like ~5 minutes making by hand. Kagi probably saves me at least an hour a month, so from an ROI it's at least 12x better than a coffee and sandwich at the shop.

nunez 3y ago

I agree. I was skeptical to use Kagi at first, but since making the jump a few months ago, I'm never looking back. Kagi gives you so much power over your search experience. I don't even have to use site:Reddit.com anymore to find non-SEO-optimized content. It's like using Google in the early 2000s!

AiAi 3y ago

> For example, you can block a whole site from your search results - and it's an easy-to-find button directly in the search results, not hidden deep within some settings or done via a manually-installed extension. I moved to Kagi for this feature. I think that if a search engine does not offer this kind of feature, it does not have the user experience as a priority. This was after getting tired of using "!g" in all my DDG searches because the results were so bad (and with so many "junk" sites).