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I started using Perplexity as my primary information-finding tool because of the progressive worsening of Google search results. Philosophically Kagi resonated

by mcdow 2y ago

I started using Perplexity as my primary information-finding tool because of the progressive worsening of Google search results. Philosophically Kagi resonated with me, but Perplexity just gave me better results and it won out. This move into an ad-driven-revenue model may tip the scales back in Kagi's favor. For those that aren't aware, (part of)the Kagi hypothesis is ad-driven-revenue ultimately leads to enshittification, and that the solution is a subscription model. I don't question the first part of this hypothesis(ads -> enshit.). But the second depends on many factors. In this particular case, how long does the enshittification take? What if we just move to a world where every 10-20 years, there is a new VC-subsidized but ultimately ad-funded organization that kills the previous incumbent? And we just jump from ship to ship, never realizing the cycle we are in because it takes 10-20 years for the ad model to rot at the core of the product.

int_19h 2y ago
To be fair, that first part is not just a Kagi hypothesis - they literally quote Brin & Page on this: "The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users... advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers." — The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, 1998 As far as the model, I think the problem is that once ads are shown to be profitable, they become pervasive in anything mainstream, because, well, why would VCs back a startup that is not willing to take money that's on the table? There's a niche in catering to people who really, really hate the notion of targeted ads and the associated infringement of their privacy, which makes Kagi viable, but I don't see any major ad-free competition in this space. So I doubt that it can work as a cycle. We might get a competitor that works better than Google - it's not exactly a high bar these days! - to replace them eventually, but I'm pretty sure it'll also be ad-ridden. And with LLMs especially, the potential for replacing in-your-face ads with subtle but persistent bias in the desired direction can make it all much worse.

by mcdow 2y ago

int_19h 2y ago

To be fair, that first part is not just a Kagi hypothesis - they literally quote Brin & Page on this: "The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users... advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers." — The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, 1998 As far as the model, I think the problem is that once ads are shown to be profitable, they become pervasive in anything mainstream, because, well, why would VCs back a startup that is not willing to take money that's on the table? There's a niche in catering to people who really, really hate the notion of targeted ads and the associated infringement of their privacy, which makes Kagi viable, but I don't see any major ad-free competition in this space. So I doubt that it can work as a cycle. We might get a competitor that works better than Google - it's not exactly a high bar these days! - to replace them eventually, but I'm pretty sure it'll also be ad-ridden. And with LLMs especially, the potential for replacing in-your-face ads with subtle but persistent bias in the desired direction can make it all much worse.