I mean, that seems like a really sceptical way to live. Often things get shilled because people are just happy with the service and think the business is doing things well. I am a kagi user and have brought it up to some others, including outside of lemmy, because I find it produces better search results than ddg etc. And it’s a definite step up from google in privacy
Use Searx with “default [all]” language option. Use Yandex with a VPN. This combo is superior to anything else. Why? Because Yandex is Russian, and unlike western search engines, they ignore DMCA law result removal requests.
Yandex results are almost better than the old 2007 Google, with reverse image search and video search being the king as well.
I used Qwant extensively, until they became another business. DDG was made by a CEO that was in data selling business before, and censors for west government agenda, like Russia bad or Israel good. Mojeek is okay but… Yandex has no competition. Startpage is proxied Google, okay but also dicey ownership.
Digdeeper has a decent comparison of search engines on his blog.
We’ll try and get that okay up to a good and then a great as time goes by! There’s a submit feedback button on results pages if you’d like to be a part of that.
Yours is one of the only names that still carries respect for me. Indexing is extremely hard when the competition is Google, Bing and Yandex, but people need the result quality. Everything else will be fine with time and effort.
I’m still trying to understand searxng, does it start with nothing and build up its index each time you search? Will your results be rubbish for a while?
They promote their search engine but their users don't get to see ads. I don't know what's wrong about that. Every company advertises with its products. I don't see what's reprehensible about that.
We did not say we maintain anonmity, but privacy, which are two different things. For example. your parents may know everything about you, yet still respect your privacy.
They're right, anonymity and privacy are two different things. Since you have to pay to use Kagi, you're not anonymous. But they allegedly don't know what you as the user search for when using their search engine. So they're being honest here and how can honesty be bad here? Anyways, we're on privacy@lemmy.ml, not anonymity@lemmy.ml or whatever.
“AI is mentioned zero times”
While I still give you this one, they're technically correct. The word "AI" isn't there but they mention AI features, haha. It's a bit debatable since Vlad said "kagi.com" - which doesn't mention AI or AI tools. Only when you go to the pricing page there are mentions of AI tools.
I don’t think we have an argument except maybe on technicality, so I’ll do my best to use your points as a springboard for further clarification/critique of Kagi and not of you.
They promote their search engine but their users don’t get to see ads. I don’t know what’s wrong about that.
What’s wrong is Vlad had “That community is 100% responsible for Kagi’s growth as a business through word of mouth (Kagi does no paid advertising)”
And he should be the first person to know that statement isn’t correct.
may know everything about you, yet still respect your privacy.
The problem here is that nobody in this community will recommend a corporation that "may know everything about you but respect your privacy."
When recommending a messager service, common consensus always leans towards the one that knows the least about you.
This is because corporations can change or be forced to give up data, which would render the pinkie-promise of “we won’t” moot
I’ve seen an argument posted here or on Reddit that Google is technically private because they know about you and won’t sell ads; it’s basically the Kagi line. Basically nobody cares even if it’s true (and it’s turned out to not be true).
Vlad said “kagi.com” - which doesn’t mention AI or AI tools.
Maybe not the homepage, but the site itself is very explicit about AI being the point of their project. And if Kagi will change their statements about everything else on a dime, and have such poor views on privacy, why not also follow their own manifesto?
You can read their pro-AI manifesto on the Kagi.com domain right here.
You can read a critique of this manifesto and how it talks about you “volunteering” your data to search engines, and other creepy stuff, right here.
This is the second CEO to be a weirdo to a random person in the past month. First it was the Tumblr CEO, now it’s the Kagi one.
Kagi was already in hot water for ignoring its paying customers’ previous complaints, so this whole “I really want to know your opinion, we are a human first company!” thing really sounds disingenuous after the same CEO overruled away all criticism or tried shuffling it away from public channels and onto his much more closed-off Discord.
The Tumblr (and WordPress and Automattic) CEO, Matt Mullenweg, banned somebody for life over apparently “explicit” Tumblr content, and that got backlash from the LGBT community.
Instead of shaking it off like an adult,
Matt (allegedly) DMed dozens of people,
followed the Tumblr user to Twitter to argue there too
complained that the Tumblr user had other edgy/explicit usernames
Email is inherently not private. Even if your own provider zealously protects your privacy, if the person you’re emailing uses Gmail, that’s all she wrote.
They know the names of their customers but they don't know their search queries. There's the privacy. At least that's what they said. Since Kagi isn't Open Source it always comes down to trust.
I enjoyed reading the article. To me, the perspective of the owner reminds me of the owners of Brave in that they are Libertarian in ways that seem aligned with mainstream views at a glance but the Venn diagram also overlaps with a disdain for regulation, while portraying a (potential) facade of being eternally infallible and trustworthy while also being a for-profit company.
Elon Musk also comes to mind in that his intelligence leaves him vulnerable to overlooking the nuances of conversations and alternative point of views. I think there’s a general over reliance on artificial intelligence as a savior that will be fully embraced that will lead to large issues in the short/long term for Kagi.
Personally, it always felt a little bit like astroturfing hearing all of the kagi fanboys in every privacy thread, but for what it’s worth, seeing them show up live In the flesh in this thread as well makes me feel a bit less like I’m talking to bots lol
Personally, I self-host my own version of searXng that only uses search engines that don’t track my IP address. I’d say that those results are good enough 90% of the time, and when I need something more granular, I use a publicly hosted version of searXng that uses Google in its results
TBH, OP sounds like a bit of an entitled douche, edit: not the most appropriate descriptor, but I do think OP should try and look at the situation from another perspective.
In their blog post they complained about lack of transparency and noted numerous issues with Kagi that caused them to lose faith in the company. The CEO personally responds to explain themselves (i.e. make things more transparent) and OP sticks their fingers in their ears and acts liked they’re a victim because the CEO attempts service recovery.
I’ve made public complaints about companies before. I wish I received such tailored and personalised responses.
Sure, why not? Though please don’t spread it around, I’m currently under deep cover pretending to be an Australian who frequently comments on Australian news and is registered with an Australian-themed instance.
It’s all part of my evil plan to have the first multinational company with their global headquarters in Antarctica.
I agree with you. I wasn’t referring to the actual contents so much as OP’s attitude about the e-mails from the CEO. I think Kagi could benefit from hiring, or at least consulting, with specialists in the field to better define their position. It’s clear that OP has legitimate concerns.
I haven’t seen many public diatribes against Kagi, but the ones I have seem to be like this person. They complain very publicly based on their perception of Vlad, spend their days in Discord fomenting drama (which seems like something only children should be doing) and are so fragile that they think getting measured emails from someone they went after publicly is a form of harrassment. It’s absurd.
I can only hope this was written by a teenager, otherwise it’s a pretty rough way to live as an adult.
After reading your comment, my calling the OP an ‘entitled douche’ was not the best response. I remember the fragility of being a teenager, and even being a young adult… While unlikely, if the blog’s author does come across these comments, I would rather they take a moment to consider things from Vlad’s/Kagi’s perspective rather than just take my comment as a personal attack.
I’m still considering giving it a try. I’ve been using the free perplexity app to do all my searching with recently and that’s worked pretty well, but not perfect.
Just try it. You can always cancel your subscription if you don't like it (or just pay once without subscribing). I've been using it for half a year now and absolutely love it.
I’ve been using both Perplexity and Kagi for searching things, and it’s working out pretty well for me. The main thing that I find Kagi useful for is filtering to Fediverse results (which tends to be mostly Lemmy threads).
Im with Kagi on this. Wtf is wrong with someone sending you emails to an email you decided to make public. This person is projecting how fragile their argument is by reacting this way.
Vlad was doing the right thing discussing it in private first before they probably address this stupid attempt at causing drama. I read all of the shit they posted and it sounds to me like they are nitpicking/strawmanning AI features which are very VERY optional.
Wtf is wrong with someone sending you emails to an email you decided to make public
there’s nothing wrong with that. continuously messaging someone after being told more than once that the recipient doesn’t want to continue the conversation, though? that’s not okay.
I get that but it's a dick move by the author of that article to publicly speak bad about a product and then don't even wanna listen to what that person who made that product has to say to defend it. Especially if there's some false information that get's spread by that article. I'm not saying anything written in that article is true or false - just explaining the situation from Vlad's view.
Blog post or article - whatever. The effect is the same: It's on the internet, people read it and get influenced. Just because I picked the wrong word doesn't kill my point. I'm sure you get what I meant.
I enjoy kagi as a service that I’ve paid for, but yeah… stuff like this makes it hard to enjoy with a clear conscience.
I think the op already said this, but at least this shows that a product like this (with a little more focus, transparency, and integrity) could be sustainable.
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