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I love Kagi, and have been a proud user for almost a year now. Lately, however, the more I read about Vlad and the variety of things the company is working on,

I love Kagi, and have been a proud user for almost a year now. Lately, however, the more I read about Vlad and the variety of things the company is working on, the more I get worried. My (potentially naive) hope is that more companies enter this sector of paid search engines and the competition helps iron out the kinks. I want nothing more than a good set of options to choose from.

fl0id 1y ago
Yeah same. Super worried
erlend_sh 1y ago
I’d be much more at ease with their long term prospects if they begun the process of transitioning to a cooperative or steward-ownership, so that they’re less at risk of CEO-capture.
- SllX 1y ago
  I mean I'm fine with them as they are now, corporate-structure-wise. What happens if Kagi starts to suck? I stop paying for it and move on with my life, so rather than worrying about what could happen, I'll just enjoy it for what it is now. If nothing else, Google taught me that just because something is great today doesn't mean it will necessarily be great tomorrow. I can't get attached.
  - tkel 1y ago
    Maybe what you really want is a consumer cooperative. A business collectively owned by it's users.
    - beAbU 1y ago
      You are describing normal public shareholding. Soon those users will stop caring about the product that they use, but rather about the value of the underlying share/s.
    - SllX 1y ago
      No. I don’t care what their corporate structure is. I just don’t get attached.
    - redserk 1y ago
      A cooperative will not solve the problem of a company eventually making a decision that some group of users will not like. There exists exactly 0 business structures that can solve the problem of 100.00% of a userbase being completely satisfied with all decision-making.
dkh 1y ago
Are you just worried about his/their divided attention or are there specific projects that concern you?
- mr_tombuben 1y ago
  Some people might have issue with their push into LLM AIs with their Assistant. I personally don’t care for it and am happy that by not using it I’m not subsidising other peoples use of the paid APIs they use. But I’ve seen some people take issue with the development time being taken up by it at all.
  - hobofan 1y ago
    I am one of those worried people (and have voiced that opinion here on HN before). However they have been on that course for a good part of the last year though, and they ultimately deliver a good product, which is what matters at the end of the day. Kagi mostly feels "feature-complete", and I'd rather have them spend time on the AI projects than trying to be too inventive and overloading the core product, which is the route many other startups take when they get to that point.
    - AlotOfReading 1y ago
      I don't think that the core product is nearly complete, even though I'm happy to keep paying for it. I still find myself falling back to Google for things like weather, flight info, or restaurants. I also put a family member on it that has to search for home products regularly as part of their contractor job. Google's decline was making that impossible. They wanted kagi to surface interesting results beyond SEO'd junk sites, which it mostly failed to do (though still better than Google).
  - anon7000 1y ago
    It’s fair to be concerned, but web search is probably the most likely field to be completely disrupted by AI. I mean if I’m asking a question, and would find an answer in the first page of search results, it’s pretty likely AI surface the same information more quickly than me sifting through pages of search results. So I think it’s fair for them to at least have people thinking about that. Plus, the features they have aren’t intrusive and are completely optional. Like, it’d be dumb for a company to not spend development time on a threat that has a decent potential to shrink their (already captured) market.
marcus_holmes 1y ago
Same. Happy Kagi user, and very happy to pay for search now I've tried it. Hopefully, now that they've proven that you can create a profitable company from doing this, more will follow and we'll get a proper ecosystem. Like others, I'd prefer to see Kagi succeed at being the best possible search engine and nothing else, than try and do the Google thing and do everything.

fl0id 1y ago

Yeah same. Super worried

erlend_sh 1y ago

I’d be much more at ease with their long term prospects if they begun the process of transitioning to a cooperative or steward-ownership, so that they’re less at risk of CEO-capture.

SllX 1y ago
I mean I'm fine with them as they are now, corporate-structure-wise. What happens if Kagi starts to suck? I stop paying for it and move on with my life, so rather than worrying about what could happen, I'll just enjoy it for what it is now. If nothing else, Google taught me that just because something is great today doesn't mean it will necessarily be great tomorrow. I can't get attached.
- tkel 1y ago
  Maybe what you really want is a consumer cooperative. A business collectively owned by it's users.
  - beAbU 1y ago
    You are describing normal public shareholding. Soon those users will stop caring about the product that they use, but rather about the value of the underlying share/s.
  - SllX 1y ago
    No. I don’t care what their corporate structure is. I just don’t get attached.
  - redserk 1y ago
    A cooperative will not solve the problem of a company eventually making a decision that some group of users will not like. There exists exactly 0 business structures that can solve the problem of 100.00% of a userbase being completely satisfied with all decision-making.

dkh 1y ago

Are you just worried about his/their divided attention or are there specific projects that concern you?

mr_tombuben 1y ago
Some people might have issue with their push into LLM AIs with their Assistant. I personally don’t care for it and am happy that by not using it I’m not subsidising other peoples use of the paid APIs they use. But I’ve seen some people take issue with the development time being taken up by it at all.
- hobofan 1y ago
  I am one of those worried people (and have voiced that opinion here on HN before). However they have been on that course for a good part of the last year though, and they ultimately deliver a good product, which is what matters at the end of the day. Kagi mostly feels "feature-complete", and I'd rather have them spend time on the AI projects than trying to be too inventive and overloading the core product, which is the route many other startups take when they get to that point.
  - AlotOfReading 1y ago
    I don't think that the core product is nearly complete, even though I'm happy to keep paying for it. I still find myself falling back to Google for things like weather, flight info, or restaurants. I also put a family member on it that has to search for home products regularly as part of their contractor job. Google's decline was making that impossible. They wanted kagi to surface interesting results beyond SEO'd junk sites, which it mostly failed to do (though still better than Google).
- anon7000 1y ago
  It’s fair to be concerned, but web search is probably the most likely field to be completely disrupted by AI. I mean if I’m asking a question, and would find an answer in the first page of search results, it’s pretty likely AI surface the same information more quickly than me sifting through pages of search results. So I think it’s fair for them to at least have people thinking about that. Plus, the features they have aren’t intrusive and are completely optional. Like, it’d be dumb for a company to not spend development time on a threat that has a decent potential to shrink their (already captured) market.

marcus_holmes 1y ago

Same. Happy Kagi user, and very happy to pay for search now I've tried it. Hopefully, now that they've proven that you can create a profitable company from doing this, more will follow and we'll get a proper ecosystem. Like others, I'd prefer to see Kagi succeed at being the best possible search engine and nothing else, than try and do the Google thing and do everything.