3 ms·

I've been a Kagi customer since the beta, I'm still happy to pay for the privacy and for certain UX improvements they have, for instance being able to give high

I've been a Kagi customer since the beta, I'm still happy to pay for the privacy and for certain UX improvements they have, for instance being able to give higher or lower weight to different websites in search results. I do not think the quality of their search is any better than DDG or Google. If I am being honest, it's actually worse for a lot of things, if you don't factor in that you can block bad websites without a plugin. Even paying for Kagi, I still go back to Google for any really open-ended searches where the search engine's ML can actually be helpful. For known-item searches ("fandango showtimes Seattle"), or simple searches ("pumpkin bread recipe") which are fully 90%+ of what I search for, Kagi is just fine, and they aren't after my identity (just my money).

coconut08 3y ago
can you give a few examples where you would think that kagi wouldn't be able to match google?
- karaterobot 3y ago
  Sure. Sadly, my google search history is turned off, so I don't have a list of my recent searches there. One that I remember from a couple months ago was that I was trying to recall the name of an exercise they used to do (and may still) in design schools. In the exercise, students are given a problem and a short period of time to work on it, everybody working at the same time. At the end, they get together and critique each other's solutions. My search terms in both Google and Kagi would have been something like "design exercise with simultaneous work and followup review". If I run that search now, Kagi gives me articles about psychological studies that combine exercise with learning to test whether you retain more information. It interprets "exercise" as being physical exercise, which is the wrong sense of the word in this case. I think it interprets "design" as being the design of the study, which is also the wrong domain. It does give some articles about graphic design a little way down the page. With the same terms, Google at least gives me articles about design related activities involving teams. At a glance (and in my memory of the original experiment) none of the articles give me the word I was looking for, but at least it knows the domain I'm searching in. I remember this example because this was the first time I successfully used ChatGPT to ask about something, and it actually gave me the perfect response, with no fuss, and completely blew all the other systems out of the water. I gave it a natural language version of the same search as above, and it instantly told me the answer ("charrette") along with an accurate description. So, maybe a bad example, because neither search engine was correct. But, Google definitely got me closer, and I suppose that if I did not have a very specific word in mind, it might have helped me by giving me examples of similar things. Kagi, frustratingly, seemed to have zero idea what I was asking about, and I could not even get it in the ballpark. I wish I could remember (or conjure up) a better example, but that's all I've got at the moment!
  - coconut08 3y ago
    yeah i understand the type of questions you are talking about now. thanks!

coconut08 3y ago

can you give a few examples where you would think that kagi wouldn't be able to match google?

karaterobot 3y ago
Sure. Sadly, my google search history is turned off, so I don't have a list of my recent searches there. One that I remember from a couple months ago was that I was trying to recall the name of an exercise they used to do (and may still) in design schools. In the exercise, students are given a problem and a short period of time to work on it, everybody working at the same time. At the end, they get together and critique each other's solutions. My search terms in both Google and Kagi would have been something like "design exercise with simultaneous work and followup review". If I run that search now, Kagi gives me articles about psychological studies that combine exercise with learning to test whether you retain more information. It interprets "exercise" as being physical exercise, which is the wrong sense of the word in this case. I think it interprets "design" as being the design of the study, which is also the wrong domain. It does give some articles about graphic design a little way down the page. With the same terms, Google at least gives me articles about design related activities involving teams. At a glance (and in my memory of the original experiment) none of the articles give me the word I was looking for, but at least it knows the domain I'm searching in. I remember this example because this was the first time I successfully used ChatGPT to ask about something, and it actually gave me the perfect response, with no fuss, and completely blew all the other systems out of the water. I gave it a natural language version of the same search as above, and it instantly told me the answer ("charrette") along with an accurate description. So, maybe a bad example, because neither search engine was correct. But, Google definitely got me closer, and I suppose that if I did not have a very specific word in mind, it might have helped me by giving me examples of similar things. Kagi, frustratingly, seemed to have zero idea what I was asking about, and I could not even get it in the ballpark. I wish I could remember (or conjure up) a better example, but that's all I've got at the moment!
- coconut08 3y ago
  yeah i understand the type of questions you are talking about now. thanks!