7 ms·

I've been a Kagi subscriber for several years now. If you're questioning the AI features, know that I am only barely aware they exist. I have never, not even o

I've been a Kagi subscriber for several years now. If you're questioning the AI features, know that I am only barely aware they exist. I have never, not even once, accidentally or otherwise, engaged the AI features without going out of my way to do so. I've never seen what their AI is like. I have no idea what it's for or why I'd want it. It's beautiful. Kagi has AI I suppose, but it's over there and not in my face. I don't think I've ever seen an AI nag in the UI, but their UI itself is also over there and out of my way. Thank you, Kagi, for staying politely the hell out of my way. I love you.

cyanydeez 5mo ago
It was actually difficult to find the AI interaction section. But it was useful when I wanted to find some real info on opensource GIS stuff; it helped me aggregate and review. That's the only integration that makes sense to me.
- piva00 5mo ago
  Same to me, been a Kagi subscriber for 2 years and only found the AI tool accidentally when I typed a "?" at the end of the query. It was surprising to not be annoyed by a AI feature for once, now I sporadically use it when it makes sense instead of having it shoved down my throat.
  - theshrike79 5mo ago
    It's good when you know you just want the meat of whatever you're looking for and KNOW every page answering your issue has massive amounts of fluff around it. Something like "how can I access the root filesystem of proxmox?" and you'll get an instant answer instead of a link to the whole ass Proxmox documentation.
data-ottawa 5mo ago
I mostly interact with their AI through bangs. An ending question mark enables fast answers, like Google’s AI summary. !ki sends your query to the assistant on light research mode. It runs a few searches against their index and summarizes the results. I typically don’t need more than that. Most stuff I just find through search. Maybe shopping is the weak area, as Google does get product feeds and Kagi doesn’t. I don’t think this bothers me at all.
seviu 5mo ago
The small thing that annoys me is that I am 100% sure somebody at Apple has a directive: never allow Kagi search integration. I am truly baffled (and annoyed) about this fact.
- daft_pink 5mo ago
  I know right. It’s simple. Google pays them over a billion dollars and Kagi doesn’t.
  - BirAdam 5mo ago
    However, Apple does allow DDG, Ecosia, and Bing. They just don’t allow Brave or Kagi.
    - trollbridge 5mo ago
      Easily fixed by installing Brave Browser.
      - freehorse 5mo ago
        Or a bunch of other browsers. Nothing special about brave.
      - daft_pink 5mo ago
        Just not very practical on iOS or iPad
  - alex1138 5mo ago
    I get annoyed at Whatsapp and see it as a case for antitrust but apparently Google is just as guilty of this
- xp84 5mo ago
  Using third-party browsers on iOS isn’t nearly as annoying as it was a few years ago. I had been driven to switch back to Safari a few years ago after trying to make a go of it. But last year I switched back to a third-party default browser and have been happy. Third-party keyboards, still not usable but browsers are basically ok.
amelius 5mo ago
Kagi uses Yandex which is Russian.
- mystraline 5mo ago
  Yandex is great if youre searching for pirated content or for DMCA'd content that ended up on Gitflic.ru Anti-drm tools are a big case in point. And so is Bypass Paywalls Clean Firefox plugin. All of these have been purged from the "Great American Corporate Firewall". Russian people != Russian govt != Russian companies. I just use the tools that work.
  - tokai 5mo ago
    [flagged]
    - onetokeoverthe 5mo ago
      [dead]
    - subscribed 5mo ago
      [flagged]
      - troad 5mo ago
        [flagged]
        subscribed 5mo ago
        [flagged]
        troad 5mo ago
        The US attacks on Iran is a different event altogether from the Israeli genocide in Gaza. You're conflating discrete conflicts with different parties and different modes of engagement. The US attack on that school is atrocious and I condemn it. While possibly a war crime, it does not meet the definition of genocide, unlike Israel's conduct in Gaza, which certainly does. There's no evidence of recent US conduct amounting to genocide (much historical evidence vis-a-vis American Indians though). To the extent you wish to penalise complicity in genocide, go for it, but I will notice if you're oddly selective in which genocides you apply that standard to, and which you don't. (Which countries traded with Burma during the Rohingya genocide? Do you know? Do you care?) > brown children What does the children's colour have to do with anything at all? Do we grade the severity of war crimes by the (perceived? assigned?) race of the victim? Horrific thought.
Izmaki 5mo ago
I'm curious: what is your use-case for a search engine that justifies Kagi over free search engines? Are you not finding your results on page one, first try, with other engines?
- mjamesaustin 5mo ago
  This is constantly the case, anytime I Google something more obscure than the front page of a top 50 website. Even when Google gets it right (often they don't) I have to wade through a bunch of AI slop and countless ads. After that, it's dozens of SEO referral link sites trying to sell me garbage. Kagi gives me better results by default, no ads, and I can customize results by prioritizing or blocking different domains. Very much worth the small price.
- subscribed 5mo ago
  [flagged]
- vitally3643 5mo ago
  I grew up in the 90s, in the fourth grade we spent a whole week learning how to effectively use search engines and what research even is. So I have some pretty solid opinions on what makes a functional search engine. A good search engine shows you the results for exactly the query you entered. A good search engine does not discard your entire query to show you what it thinks you meant. A good search engine supports and respects modifiers and advanced queries: AND, OR, NOT, quoted strings, plus and minus. It gives you advanced parameters like publish/retreival date, categories, origin. If there are no results for your exact, specific query, a good search engine shows you zero results. A good search engine does not waste your time with literally infinite fake results tangentially related to what the engine decided you meant instead of honoring your query. I gleefully pay for Kagi because it's a good search engine. It does all the things a good search engine should do. It does not do the things that bad search engines do. Kagi has put great effort into designing a search engine that maximises your ability to find the thing you're looking for. Because I pay Kagi with cold hard cash, I do not have to instead pay Kagi by consuming thousands of fake "sponsored" search results. I enter a query, and Kagi gives me precisely the results for that query and nothing more. It's really that simple. I pay for Kagi because it's a good search engine, and most other search engines are not good. Google isn't even a search engine anymore. It's a heuristic ad delivery mechanism that happens to also surface indexed web content. Your query is a suggestion and is usually disregarded completely and replaced with a more lucrative query. Google hasn't supported advanced search in over a decade. No plus or minus or quoted strings make any difference. I heartily encourage you to learn about search engines and try one. I doubt very strongly that you've ever used a proper search engine. You've most likely only engaged with heuristic ad machines before. Try a search engine, you'll never want to go back.

cyanydeez 5mo ago

It was actually difficult to find the AI interaction section. But it was useful when I wanted to find some real info on opensource GIS stuff; it helped me aggregate and review. That's the only integration that makes sense to me.

piva00 5mo ago
Same to me, been a Kagi subscriber for 2 years and only found the AI tool accidentally when I typed a "?" at the end of the query. It was surprising to not be annoyed by a AI feature for once, now I sporadically use it when it makes sense instead of having it shoved down my throat.
- theshrike79 5mo ago
  It's good when you know you just want the meat of whatever you're looking for and KNOW every page answering your issue has massive amounts of fluff around it. Something like "how can I access the root filesystem of proxmox?" and you'll get an instant answer instead of a link to the whole ass Proxmox documentation.

data-ottawa 5mo ago

I mostly interact with their AI through bangs. An ending question mark enables fast answers, like Google’s AI summary. !ki sends your query to the assistant on light research mode. It runs a few searches against their index and summarizes the results. I typically don’t need more than that. Most stuff I just find through search. Maybe shopping is the weak area, as Google does get product feeds and Kagi doesn’t. I don’t think this bothers me at all.

seviu 5mo ago

The small thing that annoys me is that I am 100% sure somebody at Apple has a directive: never allow Kagi search integration. I am truly baffled (and annoyed) about this fact.

daft_pink 5mo ago
I know right. It’s simple. Google pays them over a billion dollars and Kagi doesn’t.
- BirAdam 5mo ago
  However, Apple does allow DDG, Ecosia, and Bing. They just don’t allow Brave or Kagi.
  - trollbridge 5mo ago
    Easily fixed by installing Brave Browser.
    - freehorse 5mo ago
      Or a bunch of other browsers. Nothing special about brave.
    - daft_pink 5mo ago
      Just not very practical on iOS or iPad
- alex1138 5mo ago
  I get annoyed at Whatsapp and see it as a case for antitrust but apparently Google is just as guilty of this
xp84 5mo ago
Using third-party browsers on iOS isn’t nearly as annoying as it was a few years ago. I had been driven to switch back to Safari a few years ago after trying to make a go of it. But last year I switched back to a third-party default browser and have been happy. Third-party keyboards, still not usable but browsers are basically ok.

amelius 5mo ago

Kagi uses Yandex which is Russian.

mystraline 5mo ago
Yandex is great if youre searching for pirated content or for DMCA'd content that ended up on Gitflic.ru Anti-drm tools are a big case in point. And so is Bypass Paywalls Clean Firefox plugin. All of these have been purged from the "Great American Corporate Firewall". Russian people != Russian govt != Russian companies. I just use the tools that work.
- tokai 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  - onetokeoverthe 5mo ago
    [dead]
  - subscribed 5mo ago
    [flagged]
    - troad 5mo ago
      [flagged]
      - subscribed 5mo ago
        [flagged]
        troad 5mo ago
        The US attacks on Iran is a different event altogether from the Israeli genocide in Gaza. You're conflating discrete conflicts with different parties and different modes of engagement. The US attack on that school is atrocious and I condemn it. While possibly a war crime, it does not meet the definition of genocide, unlike Israel's conduct in Gaza, which certainly does. There's no evidence of recent US conduct amounting to genocide (much historical evidence vis-a-vis American Indians though). To the extent you wish to penalise complicity in genocide, go for it, but I will notice if you're oddly selective in which genocides you apply that standard to, and which you don't. (Which countries traded with Burma during the Rohingya genocide? Do you know? Do you care?) > brown children What does the children's colour have to do with anything at all? Do we grade the severity of war crimes by the (perceived? assigned?) race of the victim? Horrific thought.

Izmaki 5mo ago

I'm curious: what is your use-case for a search engine that justifies Kagi over free search engines? Are you not finding your results on page one, first try, with other engines?

mjamesaustin 5mo ago
This is constantly the case, anytime I Google something more obscure than the front page of a top 50 website. Even when Google gets it right (often they don't) I have to wade through a bunch of AI slop and countless ads. After that, it's dozens of SEO referral link sites trying to sell me garbage. Kagi gives me better results by default, no ads, and I can customize results by prioritizing or blocking different domains. Very much worth the small price.
subscribed 5mo ago
[flagged]
vitally3643 5mo ago
I grew up in the 90s, in the fourth grade we spent a whole week learning how to effectively use search engines and what research even is. So I have some pretty solid opinions on what makes a functional search engine. A good search engine shows you the results for exactly the query you entered. A good search engine does not discard your entire query to show you what it thinks you meant. A good search engine supports and respects modifiers and advanced queries: AND, OR, NOT, quoted strings, plus and minus. It gives you advanced parameters like publish/retreival date, categories, origin. If there are no results for your exact, specific query, a good search engine shows you zero results. A good search engine does not waste your time with literally infinite fake results tangentially related to what the engine decided you meant instead of honoring your query. I gleefully pay for Kagi because it's a good search engine. It does all the things a good search engine should do. It does not do the things that bad search engines do. Kagi has put great effort into designing a search engine that maximises your ability to find the thing you're looking for. Because I pay Kagi with cold hard cash, I do not have to instead pay Kagi by consuming thousands of fake "sponsored" search results. I enter a query, and Kagi gives me precisely the results for that query and nothing more. It's really that simple. I pay for Kagi because it's a good search engine, and most other search engines are not good. Google isn't even a search engine anymore. It's a heuristic ad delivery mechanism that happens to also surface indexed web content. Your query is a suggestion and is usually disregarded completely and replaced with a more lucrative query. Google hasn't supported advanced search in over a decade. No plus or minus or quoted strings make any difference. I heartily encourage you to learn about search engines and try one. I doubt very strongly that you've ever used a proper search engine. You've most likely only engaged with heuristic ad machines before. Try a search engine, you'll never want to go back.