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I've been loving Kagi search and am really looking forward to Orion being available outside Apple land. You can join the email list here: https://kagi.com/chang
by Mossy9 2y ago
I've been loving Kagi search and am really looking forward to Orion being available outside Apple land. You can join the email list here: https://kagi.com/changelog#6479 https://kagi.com/changelog#6479
I'm a bit worried that Kagi might be over-extending here. Instead of focusing and capitalizing on search, they're expanding to the difficult business of browsers. I'm always hesitant when companies try to do everything everywhere all at once, since that might cause a loosening of focus on the original product.
I hope them all the best nonetheless - people actually paying for software is due a comeback!
- BoredPositron 2y agoThey started with Orion.
- Mossy9 2y agoOh really? I did not know that. Sounds a lot better than the other way around
- erics118 2y agoTheir original product was an AI product, that later transformed into the search engine. Then, Orion was developed https://help.kagi.com/kagi/company/history.html https://help.kagi.com/kagi/company/history.html
- BoredPositron 2y agoYeah, probably messed up the timeline because Orion had an earlier public release.
- jmbwell 2y agoTrying to use Kagi with other browsers lays bare the depth of collusion between browser makers and search providers. Getting out from under all that makes Kagi a whole lot more seamless and useful. It’s ironic that it is its own tight collusion, with the difference that you can use Orion just as well with any other search providers as with Kagi. So yeah, it seems like a departure from search, until you consider that for the features that make Kagi a worthwhile search product (privacy, neutrality, etc), “you can’t get there from here” with the other browsers.
- lurk2 2y ago> (privacy, neutrality, etc) It's proprietary. There's no way of knowing that it's private.
- saagarjha 2y agoIf only we had a field of computer science dedicated to analyzing the security properties of black boxes…
- kerkeslager 2y agoI'm curious how you think this can be analyzed effectively. Yes, I'm aware of bytecode analysis, but that's a slow difficult process, and for browsers, the release cycle is short enough that by the time you're done analyzing the current version, a new version is out, and it's significantly harder and less useful to diff a binary, so you end up having to basically start the analysis over for the new version. Unless there's something going on here that I don't know of, that's simply not a viable means of keeping track of browser security.
- saagarjha 2y agoEvaluating browser security is hard. Checking privacy guarantees is easy: you can just look at the traffic it generates. Vlad has a pretty simple and quite strong policy that Kagi doesn’t phone home unless you agree to it. If you find it does otherwise (should be pretty easy to monitor) you should take it up with him.
- kerkeslager 2y agoThis is completely wrong. Malicious software has a long history of detecting monitoring so it can avoid detection. A closed-source browser with backdoors can detect Wireshark, Little Snitch, or whatever you're using to detect outgoing connections, and not connect while those programs are running. The problem is even more insidious when you're making regular expected connections to a site that the browser creator controls. Many (most?) Orion users are already connecting to Kagi on a regular basis, so they can simply wait until the user logs in to Kagi and smuggle out the data they've collected along with the login request. In the most extreme case, the browser can not exfiltrate any data at all unless triggered to do so. In this case, the attacker targets specific victims to exfiltrate data from, but avoids exfiltrating from any security researchers or knowledgeable users who might be running software to detect the exfiltration. In short, the goal here is for those of us with more knowledge to be able to verify the software for every user, because not everyone is capable of monitoring their outgoing traffic effectively, and it's far too easy for backdoored software to simply not phone home when it's being monitored.
- brightball 2y agoMy guess is that they realize the opportunity created by Mozilla’s sudden change in privacy terms.
- colonial 2y agoI think this is correct. I refuse to touch Chromium with a ten-foot pole, but there aren't really any other options on Linux. (Yes, there is LibreWolf and other forks, but I doubt any have the resources to "go it alone" should Mozilla fold or go completely turncoat.) The closest extant option is something like GNOME Web (also based on WebKit like Orion) but the lack of extension support and poor performance makes it a non-starter. As someone who already pays for Kagi search, Orion will definitely be on my radar. I'll gladly volunteer $5/mo if I can just copy-paste my extensions unchanged and keep browsing.
- saagarjha 2y agoThey've been working on Orion for years.
- erics118 2y agoI doubt this is the case. They were working on a prototype back in October 2023 [1], but then the contractor bailed out [2], but now they got (probably different) people working on it now [1]: https://orionfeedback.org/d/6363-orion-for-linux https://orionfeedback.org/d/6363-orion-for-linux [2]: https://orionfeedback.org/d/6363-orion-for-linux/30 https://orionfeedback.org/d/6363-orion-for-linux/30
- Crontab 2y agoDoesn't Kagi Search just regurgitate Google's search results?
- jasonvorhe 2y agoNever seen that happen and I've done hundreds of comparative searches by now.
- zamadatix 2y agoKagi mixes many different sources, including some from their own indexes. They lean heavy into the "try to answer using an integration with a more focused oracle" rather than the "throw as many sites at the user as possible" approach.
- Hikikomori 2y agoNot in my experience. Can also block or derank domains in your result, no more quora or Pinterest.
- aryonoco 2y agoConsidering that Kagis’s results are actually useful and google just brings up listicles and ads, I’d say no.
- lawn 2y agoKagi has much better results in my experience.
- atombender 2y agoI'm a Kagi user and did a couple of test searches just now. Ignoring inserts like image results and "related searches" and so on, the results were completely different. Note that if it this were true, Kagi brings features to the table that make it worth the price. For one, it allows you to prioritize/deprioritize sites, and it allows you to block sites from all search results.
- niutech 2y agoThis is what Brave Search does too with Goggles.
- amelius 2y agoRelax, they didn't write the entire browser. It's webkit based.
- zamadatix 2y agoHaving been wondering what their cross platform plans for Orion were the other day and seeing this in the FAQ I don't think it's fair to frame it as small potatoes work just because it could have been even harder. It's still real work and a significant effort. https://help.kagi.com/orion/faq/faq.html#other_os_support https://help.kagi.com/orion/faq/faq.html#other_os_support: "Are there plans for a Windows/Linux/Android version of Orion? We currently do not have the resources to hire a new team to do any of these platforms yet. Since Orion is funded by its users only, it is entirely up to the number of subscribers and Orion+ sales we have that will enable funding a new team to make Orion for any new platform. And building a browser is not cheap, especially one on top of WebKit." Interesting that they concluded Linux was the next most worthwhile one to target but I suppose is probably more popular with users attracted to Kagi/Orion.
- Aeolun 2y agoI recently decided against Orion because I have linux machines as well. Can’t use it if it doesn’t sync across all my devices.
- SllX 2y agoThe CEO of Kagi has fairly strong views on user privacy as far as I can tell. I don’t know what his opinion of Windows is, but I’m willing to bet there’s a personal dislike of Windows and Android that is at least partially affecting the decision-making process here. They also don’t seem like they’re trying to go big, just stay profitable.
- throwaway7858 2y agoAndroid can be much more private than iOS if you pull the right levers - GrapheneOS is based on Android after all.
- dcow 2y agoDidn’t Kagi ship Orion first, before the search product?
- erics118 2y agoNo, they made Kagi first. See their history page: https://help.kagi.com/kagi/company/history.html https://help.kagi.com/kagi/company/history.html
- dcow 2y agoIt’s a little deceptive. While early work began on Kagi prior to Orion, Orion launched prior to Kagi becoming GA. I think that can be interpreted in relatively different ways, mine being that I got to experience Orion as a product before Kagi. Anyway thanks for the timeline link.