12 ms·

I'd be more than willing to subscribe and support the project BUT, I need to address the elephant in the room: The reason why I'm against Kagi is the fact that

by axegon_ 5mo ago

I'd be more than willing to subscribe and support the project BUT, I need to address the elephant in the room: The reason why I'm against Kagi is the fact that they use Yandex(be it only for images according to their own words) and I'm sure as hell refusing to give a single cent to them. So I guess my question is: sources?

psychoslave 5mo ago
What's wrong with Yandex? Is it quality of service being too low? Does the company have tracking records of shady practices, worst than what GAFAM are doing that make customer flee away?
- wolvoleo 5mo ago
  It's Russian. Indirectly you are supporting Putin when you use it. Those sanctions aren't for no reason.
  - axegon_ 5mo ago
    ^ Correct!
  - chadgpt3 5mo ago
    Am I indirectly supporting Trump when I use DuckDuckGo?
    - woadwarrior01 5mo ago
      Yes. You're also supporting Bing ads. With a thin veneer of privacy washing goodness, of course.
    - dodslaser 5mo ago
      Yes, and a lot of EU citizens/companies are actively in the process of migrating away from US based software/products to EU alternatives for, among others, this exact reason.
    - carlosjobim 5mo ago
      I'll give you an introduction to Modern European Ethics™: If you do something in this world and this life - remember you normally have about 70 years - there is always some detail of what you're doing that is worthy of criticism, shunning, and shaming. Since everything in the world is connected, you can't avoid it. If however you do nothing in your life or with your life, then there is also nothing which you can be criticized for doing. And you can never be criticized for not doing something. When you die after a life toting the line and having the allowed opinion on every subject and shunning people who do things; then you go to European heaven - which is an eternity of committee meetings in Brüssels.
      - wolvoleo 5mo ago
        It's not really a thing. We all know flying is a really bad thing and still the skies are full of planes also in Europe. It's just an extra factor to take into account. Like, when you can choose another solution that does not have this factor. It's not about moral superiority, just about awareness of the choices we make. I have several friends that don't do the "Bali" summer holiday thing anymore even though they would like to and can afford it. Because Greece is also fun and wastes a lot of less fuel. I like this better than the current American approach of: "We know it's bad for the environment so we will do it as much as possible to extract more profit than others before the world becomes uninhabitable. Then we will have WON!"
  - TiredOfLife 5mo ago
    Kagi pays Yandex. So you are supporting directly
    - wolvoleo 5mo ago
      Kagi -> Yandex -> Putin (through taxes), it's not really direct IMO
      - neoromantique 5mo ago
        Yandex these days is pretty much directly Kremlin, so it's not "through taxes". That being said Kagi -> Yandex hop does indeed make it indirect. (I too have stopped using Kagi after I found out that they pay Yandex and employ people who support Russian war).
        cantalopes 5mo ago
        Wait what? They employ pro russian employees and use yandex?
        nirv 5mo ago
        This Reuters article provides some useful context about Yandex: https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/after-months-negotiation-rare-russian-compromise-yandex-changes-hands-2024-02-09/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/after-months-negotiati.... Yandex was split for a while into a Russian-controlled part and an independent part in the Netherlands, controlled by the original co-founder, which later become Nebius AI. Nowadays, these entities are completely detached, and Arkady Volozh has renounced his Russian citizenship.
        cantalopes 5mo ago
        No i mean i'm surprised they support putin and pay yandex. But what is that pro russian employee thing?
- SyneRyder 5mo ago
  In my experience, Yandex was feeding in a lot of low quality results into Kagi - lots of pirated software, shady websites, proxy duplicate copycat sites, content that I'll euphemistically call "free speech". Kagi has a domain blacklist feature, but I was starting to fill up my blocklist - I think it's capped at 1000 domains, and many of these sites spin up new domains specifically to get around blocklists. There's also the geopolitical issues, which I'll skip over because similar concerns can be leveled at other indexes too. I posted about that on the Kagi feedback forums back in 2024: https://kagifeedback.org/d/4727-option-to-choose-or-exclude-specific-external-indexes https://kagifeedback.org/d/4727-option-to-choose-or-exclude-... I since built my own metasearch engine for my own use, where I choose the external indexes used, and I'm much happier. I started building a personal index of the web as well. I haven't used Kagi or Google for over a year now. I hope I'm not distracting from Bruno's Uruky project here. Not everyone is technical enough to spin up some PHP code and make their own metasearch, or spin up a VPS and install a SearxNG instance. There's value in providing a good user experience for less technical users, in building resilience by using multiple indexes & building your own, and reducing dependencies on external index APIs that may cut off your access (coffgooglebingcoff). I'm glad services like Uruky exist.
  - gunalx 5mo ago
    Main feature of urky seems to really be privacy. on my own searxNG i would be all the traffic. If I ho through urky hopefully I can hide with traffic from other users.
specproc 5mo ago
What's wrong with Yandex? I think every possible criticism of Yandex I can think of could just as easily be leveled at Google or Bing.
- _diyar 5mo ago
  but surely you realize that people going to kagi also don’t like google or bing.
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
  - carlosjobim 5mo ago
    There's little future in catering to customers who come to you only because they hate Google. They will soon find a reason to hate you and fill up your support forums and Discord with complaints. After all, they are spending the gigantic amount of $10 per month on your service, and have a right to influence the company. With Uruky, these customers can now move on instead, and the lower price will serve as another reason. And then they also don't have to worry anymore that their accountant is going to call at 3AM and demand that they "justify" the gigantic subscription cost. And Kagi can focus on the only real selling point they have: Search results quality. Which is where their future lies and what most potential customers are looking to pay for. Not being anti-Google.
  - __jonas 5mo ago
    I think the point was that kagi uses google and bing as it’s search providers, besides others like yandex
- NicuCalcea 5mo ago
  I also don't use Kagi because of Yandex, and my reason is that it's a Russian company, owned by people close to the Russian government.
  - specproc 5mo ago
    I loathe both Russian and American governments, what's a boy to do?
SockThief 5mo ago
> For web search, Uruky currently integrates Mojeek, Marginalia, EUSP (Ecosia/Qwant) (only works with French, German, or English), Linkup, Serper, and Uruky Site Search. > For image search, Uruky currently integrates Pixabay and Serper (image results). https://uruky.com/faq https://uruky.com/faq
- BrunoBernardino 5mo ago
  Thank you!
sevg 5mo ago
But is Yandex government owned? What about Russians abroad that send money back home to their families, and a percentage of that ends up going via taxes to Putin? Are we boycotting all Russians everywhere globally?
- tumdum_ 5mo ago
  Yes, we boycott anyone who supports Putin’s regime.
  - sevg 5mo ago
    Hate to break it to you, but not all Russians support Putin.
    - develop7 5mo ago
      [dead]
    - notpushkin 5mo ago
      I think the OP’s point still stands, but it is a fairly weak argument. I am Russian and I do oppose Putin’s regime. My family is in Russia, though. If I send them money (which), and they pay for, say, groceries, which are taxed, some tiny part of my money will be used to fund the regime and the war. I am very disappointed but there is no way for me to just yank all my family and friends and relocate them to a less fucked-up jurisdiction. Doing business with Yandex is a whole other beast. Kagi can choose to use a worse search engine API which doesn’t involve paying money to a Russian company. Are there some market forces at hand here? Maybe a lot of Russian expats pay for Kagi because it has good Russian-language results? I don’t know. Edit: > But is Yandex government owned? It isn’t, but I really doubt it has no ties with it. It would be interesting to trace and see if Yandex Cloud’s international branch money gets back to its Russian counterpart, or if they are two separate things.
    - tumdum_ 5mo ago
      [flagged]

by axegon_ 5mo ago

psychoslave 5mo ago

What's wrong with Yandex? Is it quality of service being too low? Does the company have tracking records of shady practices, worst than what GAFAM are doing that make customer flee away?

wolvoleo 5mo ago
It's Russian. Indirectly you are supporting Putin when you use it. Those sanctions aren't for no reason.
- axegon_ 5mo ago
  ^ Correct!
- chadgpt3 5mo ago
  Am I indirectly supporting Trump when I use DuckDuckGo?
  - woadwarrior01 5mo ago
    Yes. You're also supporting Bing ads. With a thin veneer of privacy washing goodness, of course.
  - dodslaser 5mo ago
    Yes, and a lot of EU citizens/companies are actively in the process of migrating away from US based software/products to EU alternatives for, among others, this exact reason.
  - carlosjobim 5mo ago
    I'll give you an introduction to Modern European Ethics™: If you do something in this world and this life - remember you normally have about 70 years - there is always some detail of what you're doing that is worthy of criticism, shunning, and shaming. Since everything in the world is connected, you can't avoid it. If however you do nothing in your life or with your life, then there is also nothing which you can be criticized for doing. And you can never be criticized for not doing something. When you die after a life toting the line and having the allowed opinion on every subject and shunning people who do things; then you go to European heaven - which is an eternity of committee meetings in Brüssels.
    - wolvoleo 5mo ago
      It's not really a thing. We all know flying is a really bad thing and still the skies are full of planes also in Europe. It's just an extra factor to take into account. Like, when you can choose another solution that does not have this factor. It's not about moral superiority, just about awareness of the choices we make. I have several friends that don't do the "Bali" summer holiday thing anymore even though they would like to and can afford it. Because Greece is also fun and wastes a lot of less fuel. I like this better than the current American approach of: "We know it's bad for the environment so we will do it as much as possible to extract more profit than others before the world becomes uninhabitable. Then we will have WON!"
- TiredOfLife 5mo ago
  Kagi pays Yandex. So you are supporting directly
  - wolvoleo 5mo ago
    Kagi -> Yandex -> Putin (through taxes), it's not really direct IMO
    - neoromantique 5mo ago
      Yandex these days is pretty much directly Kremlin, so it's not "through taxes". That being said Kagi -> Yandex hop does indeed make it indirect. (I too have stopped using Kagi after I found out that they pay Yandex and employ people who support Russian war).
      - cantalopes 5mo ago
        Wait what? They employ pro russian employees and use yandex?
        nirv 5mo ago
        This Reuters article provides some useful context about Yandex: https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/after-months-negotiation-rare-russian-compromise-yandex-changes-hands-2024-02-09/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/after-months-negotiati.... Yandex was split for a while into a Russian-controlled part and an independent part in the Netherlands, controlled by the original co-founder, which later become Nebius AI. Nowadays, these entities are completely detached, and Arkady Volozh has renounced his Russian citizenship.
        cantalopes 5mo ago
        No i mean i'm surprised they support putin and pay yandex. But what is that pro russian employee thing?
SyneRyder 5mo ago
In my experience, Yandex was feeding in a lot of low quality results into Kagi - lots of pirated software, shady websites, proxy duplicate copycat sites, content that I'll euphemistically call "free speech". Kagi has a domain blacklist feature, but I was starting to fill up my blocklist - I think it's capped at 1000 domains, and many of these sites spin up new domains specifically to get around blocklists. There's also the geopolitical issues, which I'll skip over because similar concerns can be leveled at other indexes too. I posted about that on the Kagi feedback forums back in 2024: https://kagifeedback.org/d/4727-option-to-choose-or-exclude-specific-external-indexes https://kagifeedback.org/d/4727-option-to-choose-or-exclude-... I since built my own metasearch engine for my own use, where I choose the external indexes used, and I'm much happier. I started building a personal index of the web as well. I haven't used Kagi or Google for over a year now. I hope I'm not distracting from Bruno's Uruky project here. Not everyone is technical enough to spin up some PHP code and make their own metasearch, or spin up a VPS and install a SearxNG instance. There's value in providing a good user experience for less technical users, in building resilience by using multiple indexes & building your own, and reducing dependencies on external index APIs that may cut off your access (coffgooglebingcoff). I'm glad services like Uruky exist.
- gunalx 5mo ago
  Main feature of urky seems to really be privacy. on my own searxNG i would be all the traffic. If I ho through urky hopefully I can hide with traffic from other users.

specproc 5mo ago

What's wrong with Yandex? I think every possible criticism of Yandex I can think of could just as easily be leveled at Google or Bing.

_diyar 5mo ago
but surely you realize that people going to kagi also don’t like google or bing.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- carlosjobim 5mo ago
  There's little future in catering to customers who come to you only because they hate Google. They will soon find a reason to hate you and fill up your support forums and Discord with complaints. After all, they are spending the gigantic amount of $10 per month on your service, and have a right to influence the company. With Uruky, these customers can now move on instead, and the lower price will serve as another reason. And then they also don't have to worry anymore that their accountant is going to call at 3AM and demand that they "justify" the gigantic subscription cost. And Kagi can focus on the only real selling point they have: Search results quality. Which is where their future lies and what most potential customers are looking to pay for. Not being anti-Google.
- __jonas 5mo ago
  I think the point was that kagi uses google and bing as it’s search providers, besides others like yandex
NicuCalcea 5mo ago
I also don't use Kagi because of Yandex, and my reason is that it's a Russian company, owned by people close to the Russian government.
- specproc 5mo ago
  I loathe both Russian and American governments, what's a boy to do?

SockThief 5mo ago

> For web search, Uruky currently integrates Mojeek, Marginalia, EUSP (Ecosia/Qwant) (only works with French, German, or English), Linkup, Serper, and Uruky Site Search. > For image search, Uruky currently integrates Pixabay and Serper (image results). https://uruky.com/faq https://uruky.com/faq

BrunoBernardino 5mo ago
Thank you!

sevg 5mo ago

But is Yandex government owned? What about Russians abroad that send money back home to their families, and a percentage of that ends up going via taxes to Putin? Are we boycotting all Russians everywhere globally?

tumdum_ 5mo ago
Yes, we boycott anyone who supports Putin’s regime.
- sevg 5mo ago
  Hate to break it to you, but not all Russians support Putin.
  - develop7 5mo ago
    [dead]
  - notpushkin 5mo ago
    I think the OP’s point still stands, but it is a fairly weak argument. I am Russian and I do oppose Putin’s regime. My family is in Russia, though. If I send them money (which), and they pay for, say, groceries, which are taxed, some tiny part of my money will be used to fund the regime and the war. I am very disappointed but there is no way for me to just yank all my family and friends and relocate them to a less fucked-up jurisdiction. Doing business with Yandex is a whole other beast. Kagi can choose to use a worse search engine API which doesn’t involve paying money to a Russian company. Are there some market forces at hand here? Maybe a lot of Russian expats pay for Kagi because it has good Russian-language results? I don’t know. Edit: > But is Yandex government owned? It isn’t, but I really doubt it has no ties with it. It would be interesting to trace and see if Yandex Cloud’s international branch money gets back to its Russian counterpart, or if they are two separate things.
  - tumdum_ 5mo ago
    [flagged]