5 ms·

Long time Kagi subscriber here. I think their focus should be to reduce resource usage on their side and make servers cheaper to run. Not other shenanigans lik

Long time Kagi subscriber here. I think their focus should be to reduce resource usage on their side and make servers cheaper to run. Not other shenanigans like t-shirt or FastGPT or whatever. They can then offer a more attractive price for general public, who has never paid for search before and gets caught in the headlights when they hear you pay. Because right now, they don’t even have 40k users and if it goes on with this tempo, while also burning their resources for AI-things, I am afraid they will not stay much longer. Don‘t get me wrong, I am okay with the 10$ I pay, but, come on… who needs a t-shirt of a search engine and two different AI-thingy?!

WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
> I think their focus should be to reduce resource usage on their side and make servers cheaper to run. I'd like for them to expose their result cache. Lately I've hit a run of pages that have updated my result away. I have a result-blurb with the search result; I could use what comes before and after it.
climb_stealth 2y ago
Funnily enough I quite like my Kagi t-shirt. Especially because it does not look like a tech company shirt at all. Could they do better things with their time and money? Probably. Do I care? Not really. But, I don't care about AI integrations either. I just like having decent search. And happy to pay for it as they seem to be doing things in the right spirit.
- kenanfyi 2y ago
  I am personally fine with the cost too, since I can afford it. My concern is that, they will go out of business because of these things. I would be really sad if that happens.
- sotix 2y ago
  Yeah I thought the t-shirt move was ridiculous, but it's genuinely a very high-quality shirt. I'd like all my company shirts to be made by them. It's still a bizarre unrelated business decision, but at least they nailed it. Agree about not being interested in AI integrations. I pay for a quality search engine, and I am happy with that product at the moment.
carlosjobim 2y ago
It's already dirt cheap at $10 per month. Businesses who want to be successful do not bargain on their prices to try to satisfy cheapskates who are never satisfied with anything else than free anyway. They set a fair price for their product and continue to improve the value they bring to real, paying customers. With that said, they should of course reduce their operating costs when they can, just like any business.
- kenanfyi 2y ago
  10$ a month is not cheap for a search engine where theoretically bigger and older engines out there are available for „free“. 10 is also psychologically difficult to accept than, I don‘t know like 4.99 for example. That‘s why it should be their focus to find a sweet spot, where it‘s still acceptable for general public to pull the trigger and subscribe and for them to keep doing this. This is not a streaming service or whatever. Their starting point was to fight Google who don‘t give a fuck about privacy and show that it‘s possible to fix the search, which Google fucked up during the years. I am also a subscriber because of this mindset, not just because it is a „product“ of a business who wants to be successful. At least that‘s what Kagi & CEO looks like at the moment. My criticism is directed to AI and the stuff they are working on. Because of all these AI and shenanigans, they are focusing their valuable time to something other than becoming the big guy in privacy sphere. Customer counts show that. And I am 100% sure that if Kagi would cost 4,99$ a month, we would be talking about hundreds of thousands of users already.
  - carlosjobim 2y ago
    The general public will never pay for a search engine as long as they have a free option, supported by ads. And that's not a problem. There are millions of companies who have millions of customers, without being something for the general public. > And I am 100% sure that if Kagi would cost 4,99$ a month, we would be talking about hundreds of thousands of users already. I really don't think so. The difference between free and paid is gigantic in the minds of people, but between $5 and $10 not so much. Especially when it's a product that brings incredible value already. If you could have dinner at the best restaurant in the country for $10, or free cup noodles in the supermarket. Would you argue all day with the waiter that the dinner should be $5? I think most people would be happy with a great deal, or go stand in line for the free cup noodles. As for privacy oriented customers, those are the absolutely worst customers imaginable for anybody selling anything. They bring a lot of headache and demand very much for the very little they pay. Building a business with trying to get people to pay because they hate your competitor is not sustainable. These customers are fickle and can start hating you instead for any or no reason. It's much better to have customers who like your product and think the price is great.

WarOnPrivacy 2y ago

> I think their focus should be to reduce resource usage on their side and make servers cheaper to run. I'd like for them to expose their result cache. Lately I've hit a run of pages that have updated my result away. I have a result-blurb with the search result; I could use what comes before and after it.

climb_stealth 2y ago

Funnily enough I quite like my Kagi t-shirt. Especially because it does not look like a tech company shirt at all. Could they do better things with their time and money? Probably. Do I care? Not really. But, I don't care about AI integrations either. I just like having decent search. And happy to pay for it as they seem to be doing things in the right spirit.

kenanfyi 2y ago
I am personally fine with the cost too, since I can afford it. My concern is that, they will go out of business because of these things. I would be really sad if that happens.
sotix 2y ago
Yeah I thought the t-shirt move was ridiculous, but it's genuinely a very high-quality shirt. I'd like all my company shirts to be made by them. It's still a bizarre unrelated business decision, but at least they nailed it. Agree about not being interested in AI integrations. I pay for a quality search engine, and I am happy with that product at the moment.

carlosjobim 2y ago

It's already dirt cheap at $10 per month. Businesses who want to be successful do not bargain on their prices to try to satisfy cheapskates who are never satisfied with anything else than free anyway. They set a fair price for their product and continue to improve the value they bring to real, paying customers. With that said, they should of course reduce their operating costs when they can, just like any business.

kenanfyi 2y ago
10$ a month is not cheap for a search engine where theoretically bigger and older engines out there are available for „free“. 10 is also psychologically difficult to accept than, I don‘t know like 4.99 for example. That‘s why it should be their focus to find a sweet spot, where it‘s still acceptable for general public to pull the trigger and subscribe and for them to keep doing this. This is not a streaming service or whatever. Their starting point was to fight Google who don‘t give a fuck about privacy and show that it‘s possible to fix the search, which Google fucked up during the years. I am also a subscriber because of this mindset, not just because it is a „product“ of a business who wants to be successful. At least that‘s what Kagi & CEO looks like at the moment. My criticism is directed to AI and the stuff they are working on. Because of all these AI and shenanigans, they are focusing their valuable time to something other than becoming the big guy in privacy sphere. Customer counts show that. And I am 100% sure that if Kagi would cost 4,99$ a month, we would be talking about hundreds of thousands of users already.
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  The general public will never pay for a search engine as long as they have a free option, supported by ads. And that's not a problem. There are millions of companies who have millions of customers, without being something for the general public. > And I am 100% sure that if Kagi would cost 4,99$ a month, we would be talking about hundreds of thousands of users already. I really don't think so. The difference between free and paid is gigantic in the minds of people, but between $5 and $10 not so much. Especially when it's a product that brings incredible value already. If you could have dinner at the best restaurant in the country for $10, or free cup noodles in the supermarket. Would you argue all day with the waiter that the dinner should be $5? I think most people would be happy with a great deal, or go stand in line for the free cup noodles. As for privacy oriented customers, those are the absolutely worst customers imaginable for anybody selling anything. They bring a lot of headache and demand very much for the very little they pay. Building a business with trying to get people to pay because they hate your competitor is not sustainable. These customers are fickle and can start hating you instead for any or no reason. It's much better to have customers who like your product and think the price is great.