Ironically going to use Kagi to summarize the blog post:
Kagi is trying to expand into too many different products and services beyond just their search engine, which is stretching their resources too thin.
Kagi spent a significant portion of their funding (1/3) to set up a t-shirt printing business to give away free t-shirts to their first 20,000 users, which seems like a questionable financial decision.
Kagi was not paying sales tax for two years and had to retroactively pay up, indicating potential financial mismanagement.
Kagi is heavily focused on developing AI tools and features, to the point where the author believes it is becoming the main focus over improving the core search functionality.
The author is very critical of Kagi’s founder Vlad’s dismissive attitude towards privacy concerns and his belief that email addresses are not personally identifiable information.
Vlad has a “my way or the highway” management style and is unwilling to consider feedback or criticism about Kagi’s direction.
Kagi’s dedication to privacy is questionable, as the founder does not seem to take many privacy concerns seriously.
The author believes Kagi’s AI-powered features like “FastGPT” and the “Universal Summarizer” are inaccurate and unreliable.
The author is skeptical about Kagi’s long-term sustainability and viability as a business.
Overall, the author has lost faith in Kagi due to the company’s questionable financial decisions, overreliance on AI, and the founder’s dismissive attitude towards user concerns.
I did actually read the post (and I think this is actually my second time seeing this). I’m majorly unconvinced by the author … and yes, the criticized AI summarizer is that good. I regularly use it after reading something to share the details with friends (or get a rough idea of what’s being discussed and decide if I want to read something non-trivially long).
It also works on YouTube videos (presumably using the transcript) which can be a HUGE time saver.
Ultimately the search is good; it’s better than what Google offers me, and I’ve found their AI tools fairly useful (despite having distrust for GPT-style chat bots/BS generating AI, I think summerization of some specified source is something they might actually do well – the major concern of piecing together random pieces of random sources of varying integrity is largely mitigated).
Whether the company will stay private / whether it lives on beyond Vlad is the biggest concern I have with using it. However, “what’s the other (practical) option to invest in?” I find myself in a similar position with Steam and Proton (at least the latter open sources much of their work). For now anyways, the weather is fair, so I’ll stay on board.