[HN Gopher] Unlimited Kagi searches for $10 per month
___________________________________________________________________
Unlimited Kagi searches for $10 per month
Author : darthShadow
Score : 417 points
Date : 2023-09-21 20:32 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.kagi.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.kagi.com)
| [deleted]
| late25 wrote:
| Interesting the HN crowd is into this for the simple fact that
| you must be logged in (and presumably tracked?) to use it.
| prh8 wrote:
| It's not tracked, that's (part of) the whole point
| jkubicek wrote:
| I have other ways to search anonymously. For 95% of my searches
| I'm happy to have my search history tracked, used to drive
| better results for me in the future and available for me to
| browse if I want to. As long as Kagi isn't selling my search
| history to another company, I actually prefer that they track
| my search history.
|
| Note: currently Kagi doesn't track search history; I hope they
| find a way to enable it in the future.
| [deleted]
| freeAgent wrote:
| Kagi doesn't currently retain search history. It's set for
| future opt-in, but can't be enabled as yet.
| t0astbread wrote:
| Browsing the site on Tor Browser gave me a Google 403 page until
| I cycled circuits a few times. Makes perfect sense given the blog
| is hosted on GCP but it did make me pause initially and consider
| if that was some sort of joke I'm not getting.
| whalesalad wrote:
| Bueno!
| ghostpepper wrote:
| This is great - I have been a happy subscriber for almost a year
| I think.
|
| My biggest complaint with Kagi is not their fault - it's the
| inability to set custom search engines on Safari (and no, I'm not
| interested in installing a custom browser extension).
| slikrick wrote:
| if you don't want to install a browser extension then safari
| having customizable search engines wouldn't help you anyways.
| you would need to login to the account which is additionally
| functionality that wouldn't be provided without the extensioj
| daft_pink wrote:
| I was skeptical about this as well but I caved and did it. It's
| amazing how hard different browsers have made it to add a
| search engine
| bob_theslob646 wrote:
| I don't understand what's wrong with charging money for a service
| that to the best of my knowledge doesn't serve you ads?
| imiric wrote:
| It's far less profitable than the advertising model.
| Unfortunately, most tech companies are VC-backed and optimize
| for profits.
|
| It also introduces adoption friction for users who are used to
| things being "free" on the internet, which hurts the
| hypergrowth shareholders want to see.
| pbarnes_1 wrote:
| Is there a dark mode?
|
| The example (https://kagi.com/search?q=steve+jobs) doesn't seem
| to respect my system theme on macOS.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Is there a dark mode?_
|
| Here is Kagi's quick answer [0], where its AI "extracts and
| summarizes the important content from the search results
| including links to the source material":
|
| "Kagi supports dark mode functionality to reduce eye
| strain.[1][2] Users can select between the Royal Blue or Moon
| Dark default themes in their appearance settings. Additionally,
| the Orion browser powered by Kagi includes dark mode that can
| be toggled on websites.[3]"
|
| [0] https://help.kagi.com/kagi/getting-started/#summarize-
| result...
|
| [1] https://help.kagi.com/kagi/settings/appearance.html
|
| [2] https://help.kagi.com/kagi/support-and-community/open-
| source...
|
| [3] https://blog.kagi.com/orion-new-features
| pbarnes_1 wrote:
| Ah, when not logged in, it defaults to light mode.
|
| When I logged in with my Google account, it detected the
| system setting.
| somsak2 wrote:
| Interesting example for a search. I found a few things that
| seem like bit like basic misses:
|
| * the regular wikipedia as the first result, and the mobile
| version of the same page as fourth one
|
| * Links to https://steveblank.com/2009/06/18/epitaph-for-an-
| entrepreneu..., which never mentions Steve Jobs
|
| * the above link also has the wrong date attached (Kagi thinks
| it was published Jul 17, 2023)
| bionade24 wrote:
| Yes, even multiple themes. You can choose between detection of
| the system preference, light and dark mode. The setting is
| bound to your account, which I like, but I don't search much on
| my phone outdoors.
| cobertos wrote:
| TIL that there was a light mode. I've been in dark mode since I
| started using it
| egonschiele wrote:
| A lot of comments mention privacy. Could someone explain who can
| see my searches at Kagi? My experience working at startups is
| that companies are very lax with customer PII. With a product
| like this, I have to assume every engineer at Kagi can see every
| search I make.
| raybb wrote:
| > Universal Summarizer, which can summarize unlimited-length
| documents, audio, and video!
|
| Any plans to let you paste in text or a PDF yet? It's quite
| annoying to have to upload the audio files somewhere to get a
| summary.
| raybb wrote:
| Edit: also would be nice is kagi transcribed videos when there
| are no transcripts available.
|
| For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlmr9NzxjUA just
| says
|
| "Sorry, a problem occurred while processing your request.
| Please try again later."
| ezekiel68 wrote:
| Also happy Kagi customer. It is my default search and I get much
| less fluff in the results than I did with big G. So happy it
| respects search modifiers!
| jmholla wrote:
| Glad they found a way to to walk back the limited search count
| (especially when so many things you wouldn't think counted did).
| Might have to re-enable my account now.
|
| Previous discussion about the prior change:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35078392 (226 Comments)
| esafak wrote:
| Now you're priced to sell.
|
| Have you done a formal price optimization? There are no priced
| competitors to pressure you to stick to a price point so you have
| leeway to experiment.
| okasaki wrote:
| I definitely wouldn't want to associate my entire search history
| with my real identity
| jamiek88 wrote:
| They don't keep logs and if you don't trust that, they accept
| crypto.
|
| Also, do you really think google doesn't know who you are?
|
| One would have to go to extraordinary lengths to hide your real
| name nowadays from even a talented curious searcher never mind
| google itself.
|
| Even Ross Ulnricht couldn't do it. And that boy had a LOT to
| lose.
| sph wrote:
| Neither do I, which is why I don't use Google.
| CobaltFire wrote:
| They offer crypto payments, and you can cycle accounts through
| throwaway emails.
|
| Vlad has addressed this several times; it's a planned use case.
| They offer it because though they don't keep logs they don't
| expect everyone to trust that.
|
| I can't find the comment but he just addressed it a couple days
| ago here on HN.
| badrabbit wrote:
| [flagged]
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| > Who wants to start a company selling fresh bottled air? Lol.
|
| i wish i could downvote this 100x. Peak bad NH stuff.
|
| Kagi is actually one of the few good new products out there
| that tackle fundamental user needs.
| badrabbit wrote:
| I respect your desire to downvote me but I respectfullu
| disagree after signing up and using them.
|
| "Bad HN stuff" is lazy argument. They sell google searches
| and their value is "we promise". Bad HN stuff is how the HN
| crowd loves to hate on commercial VPN providers who have the
| same business model but the Kagi dude speaks and talks like
| your crowd so you rally around this product.
|
| As if DDG didn't do the same thing for free. ADs were never
| the problem, the way ads work in search was the problem.
|
| One of the first lessons I learned on the internet is never
| to trust online services on their word alone and that what
| you post online (search in this case) is there to stay
| forever.
|
| You know what made me swtich from indifferent to opposing
| Kagi? After my trial ended, i kept searching for stuff in my
| nav bar, historical hits come up and when I select them,
| boom, Kagi paywall!
|
| That's why my challenge to Kagi is if they ask money for what
| DDG and like a dozen other competitors offer for free with
| privacy promises similar to Kagi, then at least offer
| insurance and put their money where their mouth is if they're
| going to ask for people's money.
|
| Also, search results after you stop paying shouldn't go back
| on paywall, you paid already for it!
|
| I commented fully expecting to get downvoted as I do now, but
| you haven't countered my fairly reasonable assertions.
| crisp wrote:
| Happy customer here. Kagi is by far the best search engine there
| is.
|
| When I first started using Kagi a year ago or so, I compared
| results with Google every now and then.
|
| Now? Never.
|
| 10 bucks a month for a tool that I use multiple times every
| single day is more than reasonable. The results hit home
| virtually every time.
|
| There are variety of features to customize your searches but
| truthfully, I never found the need for them. I've only
| blocked/deprioritized some domains, that's it. The results are
| just so good.
| sva_ wrote:
| > 10 bucks a month for a tool that I use multiple times every
| single day is more than reasonable.
|
| This number really varies based on where you live, and there is
| no pricing model that accounts for this. I suppose it is mostly
| just aimed at Americans.
| somsak2 wrote:
| This is a company, not a charity.
| jchw wrote:
| Some platforms actually do account for this by having special
| "developing countries" discounts, or some other euphemism
| like that. IIRC Gumroad is one that supports this.
| somsak2 wrote:
| Pretty funny that when textbook publishers try to do this,
| people really hate it.
| ukd1 wrote:
| Ditto; also happy customer, been paying for a long time now,
| never looked back money wise, or to google.
|
| My experience trying switching with duckduckgo (repeatedly)
| always failed; checking google, unhappy with ddg results. Kagi,
| not so.
| carlossouza wrote:
| I also stopped using Google, but I have replaced it with
| Perplexity.ai...
|
| Have you ever used Perplexity? How does Kagi compare with it?
| t0bia_s wrote:
| Interesting, thanks for tip.
| melvinmelih wrote:
| I'm still on the free Perplexity plan but it has already
| replaced my Google search by a lot. I'm a huge fan. Haven't
| tried Kagi yet though.
| kulahan wrote:
| That's awesome that it's so flexible. Can you search using
| symbols? Like if I'm trying to search "what is %" will it bring
| back results regarding the percentage sign, or results that
| start with the words "what is"?
|
| That's my major problem with google. Sometimes I need to search
| info on a symbol, and I don't know what it's called yet, so I
| have to perform another search, just to perform the one I
| actually care about.
| desperate wrote:
| ^^^^ this is so frustrating to me.
| jorams wrote:
| I've generally found searching for symbols to work quite
| well. It's a mixture of the two. You can check the results
| for "what is %" here: https://kagi.com/search?q=what+is+%25&r
| =no_region&sh=Qd1RlT2...
| IshKebab wrote:
| Why do your search links work, but the ones from Kagi's own
| "Features" page just take me to a login page?
| jorams wrote:
| It looks like the like the blog post linked to by
| Features links to plain search page URLs, which only work
| for logged-in users. I used the Share feature to get a
| sharable link. I guess that page needs to be updated.
| [deleted]
| turnsout wrote:
| Weird question, but: what do you search for?
|
| I switched to DuckDuckGo a while back but I'm not a heavy
| searcher. I would be curious to know your typical use cases!
| ghayes wrote:
| I search a lot for programming topics and when I get
| frustrated I switch to Google and get literally the same
| results. I'd say it's pretty good for web search and keeps up
| to date.
|
| The downside is things like Sports and other knowledge items
| which shows a widget I've never understood in my life.
| crisp wrote:
| Mainly tech/programming stuff for which Kagi is outstanding.
| Lately I've searched a lot about a city (restaurants, places
| to visit, events, ...) I moved in and it works for that too.
| [deleted]
| h4x0rr wrote:
| So would you say it's on-par with google results or even
| better?
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| For me, it's substantially better.
|
| The results are good by default. But you can change the
| ranking of sites in your results, so every search is custom
| to you.
|
| I pin documentation sites like MDN and pkg.go.dev and
| penalize SEO span sites.
|
| My results are custom to me and my workflows, it's pretty
| hard to go back at this point.
|
| Kagi is one of the stickiest subscription services I have.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| In my experience it's far, far better than google search. The
| ability to boost some domains and block others is invaluable.
|
| But also, because you're the customer not the product, you
| don't have to contend with Google's ad-driven search results
| and their privacy violating bs. Totally worth the money.
|
| (Kagi user since the beta, paying user since they started
| offering subscriptions.)
| rg111 wrote:
| Not GP, but from my end- a big yes! Also better than DDG,
| which is better than Google nowadays. I also use phind and
| code.you.com.
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| google search is only good if you want to know "what the
| corporate hive mind thinks what their idea of an average
| consumer should think about it"
| daft_pink wrote:
| I think it is better most of the time because:
|
| - it combines the top 10 this or that list into listicles
| that are aggregated into their own section and I find to
| often be full of spam - it lets you block or deprioritize any
| site you want like quora, medium, Forbes, that often give me
| useless or incorrect info or are just their to boost so - it
| lets you prioritize sites you like in the search ranking - it
| doesn't have blocked or censored keywords - it lets you
| specify by date or time quickly and easily which I find to be
| beneficial and google seems to hide it constantly move around
| in news
|
| It's weaker for like looking up a phone number or hours for a
| local eatery, but in general I like it better.
| NobodyNada wrote:
| Yes, its results are far better than Google's. Google results
| are full of SEO spam, marketing pages, etc. Kagi tends to
| surface official documentation, blog posts, online
| discussion/Q&A. Overall, it does a very good job highlighting
| "real" content rather than "artificial" content. Plus, you
| can personalize it by boosting/downranking/blocking sites,
| creating regex rewrite rules on URLs, etc.
| TradingPlaces wrote:
| $9 now. Just signed up for the annual; 10% off
| cobertos wrote:
| I've been using Kagi for about a year now as well and have been
| very happy. I find that I still go back to Google when I am
| ready to purchase a product or find a local service. In this
| case, I find that I'm generally happy with the people who are
| paying money for search placement (either directly to Google or
| for hardcore SEO) and find I can get less "fly-by-night" type
| companies that way.
| dylan604 wrote:
| that's funny as the fly-by-night companies in my experience
| are the ones spending all of their efforts to win the SEO to
| get those clicks where the established companies can be found
| by less sleazy methods
| mongol wrote:
| Can the search result quality be quantified somehow? I remember
| when Google was new, and I used to use Altavista and Hotbot and
| those older search engines, the difference in results were like
| night and day, and Google's results were "wow!"
|
| Does Kagi give a similar impression as Google did then?
| prennert wrote:
| you can try it out. They give you 100 free searches.
| distract8901 wrote:
| Kagi is as good as google _used_ to be. It doesn 't have that
| same 'wow' effect because we've all experienced what good
| search is.
|
| It feels like turning on your ad blocker. It's what web
| search was supposed to be all along. It isn't that it's
| better than Google, Google is just so much worse now.
|
| I'm extremely happy with it. Just the ability to block
| Pinterest from my results forever is worth the price.
| dcow wrote:
| I do think Kagi adds features that improve on what Google
| offered in its heyday and saying meh there's nothing _new_
| doesn 't capture the full picture, but I generally
| understand your vibe.
| seventytwo wrote:
| It's not that Kagi is _better_ at search, it's that Kagi is
| cleaner and more efficient. It doesn't do bullshit dark
| patterns, reward SEO, track the shit out of you, or hide
| valuable tools.
|
| I'm a huge fan of the lenses feature. Specifically for
| technical searches... I can filter for forums only or PDFs
| only or academic stuff only.
| pierat wrote:
| > It's not that Kagi is better at search, it's that Kagi is
| cleaner and more efficient. It doesn't do bullshit dark
| patterns, reward SEO, track the shit out of you, or hide
| valuable tools.
|
| Yet.
|
| Google did the same originally. Super clean, just delivered
| whatever was searched for; no more, no less.
|
| When Kagi gets a taste of how much money is available for
| tracking and profiling users. and theyll start small. And
| since you have to be logged in to do searches, everything
| is already pre-tracked. Then its only a matter of recording
| and selling (on the sly) to data brokers.
|
| I used not to be this jaded. But its watching the same
| thing again and again is why I wait for it this time
| around. All good things do indeed come to an end.
| askvictor wrote:
| Not just that, but it's not really on the radar of SEO.
| If they get big, SEO will probably lead to the same
| enshitification as happened to Google.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Can the search result quality be quantified somehow?_
|
| Encourage you to try it. I've repeated Scott Galloway's
| mantra that advertisement is a tax on America's poor and
| stupid. But I never quite clocked the cost of search ads. It
| might be solely due to that lack of scrolling through crud
| that makes Kagi seem much, much faster than Google or
| DuckDuckGo.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Isn't that the same thing said about Lotto/scratch-
| offs/etc?
| crisp wrote:
| I think I belong to the generation that grew up using just
| Google so I cannot comment on quantification.
|
| The biggest difference for me is that on Kagi, the first
| results are always relevant instead of clutter/ads that you
| see on Google.
| mypetocean wrote:
| I've been around to compare them all (and used to spend
| countless hours doing search engine research on Fravia's
| "web search lores" website).
|
| Google represented a huge step up in search result quality
| generally. But in recent years, the quality has really slid
| - even while tuning results using more advanced Google
| features.
|
| I don't think Google cares much about search result quality
| these days, except insofar as they have to keep a minimum
| threshold just to drive their ad and analytics revenue.
|
| There is a lot of opportunity for other search engines to
| make strides forward in quality relative to Google these
| days.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| That's how Google was when I was a kid
| esafak wrote:
| Yes, in many ways, such as the proportion of items on the
| first page of a query response that are relevant.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaluation_measures_(informati.
| ..
| adamsb6 wrote:
| I'm just a week into using it, but one of the things I've
| noticed is that for technical queries official docs are
| ranked a lot higher than random blogs and those sites that
| just repackage content they scraped from Stack Overflow.
|
| I don't know if they're putting a finger on the scale, or
| maybe they're just doing the original Google thing of ranking
| sites that seem to be where the search terminates higher, but
| it's good.
| svaha1728 wrote:
| If you evaluate Kagi make sure to play around with the
| "Personalized Results" settings. I find as a programmer, I
| love the ability to push blogs and resources I like up to the
| top of the list. You can check out the leaderboard to see,
| globally what sites get blocked or raised:
| https://kagi.com/stats?stat=leaderboard
| robocat wrote:
| #4 pinned is hacker news!!! So clearly big crossover
| between HN fans and kagi. 8,629 Members.
|
| Top Blocked (from most blocked):
|
| pinterest.com/.co.uk/.ca/.de/.fr/.com.au/.es facebook.com
| foxnews.com tiktok.com quora.com w3schools.com
| breitbart.com dailymail.co.uk appsloveworld.com
| instagram.com githubplus.com geeksforgeeks.org libhunt.com
| twitter.com msn.com healthline.com solveforum.com
| 9to5answer.com alternativeto.net giters.com wikihow.com
| nypost.com codegrepper.com issuehint.com cnn.com educba.com
| coder.social linkedin.com geekrepos.com kknews.cc
| bleepcoder.com amazon.com programcreek.com forbes.com
| newbedev.com drivereasy.com medium.com lightrun.com you.com
| reddit.com webmd.com blog.csdn.net nytimes.com
| washingtonpost.com
| shermozle wrote:
| Oh man I blocked all these when I first started using it
| and haven't even thought of it since. Now I realise how
| much Pinterest and W3Schools not showing up has improved
| my life!
| HanClinto wrote:
| I've generally really loved w3schools for their tutorials
| -- I've been using them to teach my kids web programming
| and whatnot recently and generally been happy with them.
| Is there something I'm missing about it? Maybe it's
| because we have really good ad-blockers running, but
| their content seems fine and (generally?) not terribly
| "lifted" from other sites (I.E., just SEO spam).
|
| Is there a replacement for them that fills the same gap
| for web reference / tutorials?
| rg111 wrote:
| I read some days back on HN that even Yandex is better than
| Google nowadays. And I apologoze for shilling a Russian
| company, but it is true! For some queries, Yandex is better
| than Google.
|
| I have replaced Google completely with DDG for most searches,
| ChatGPT for some things, GitHub Copilot for mundane code
| questions, phind or code.you.com for things requiring more
| search, and Kagi for things requiring much more searching.
|
| I use Google only now for nearby searches like "gas stations
| near me", etc.
|
| I never really thought that this day would come. I love Kagi
| for being able to block Pinterest from everywhere,
| GeeksforGeeks, etc.
| pierat wrote:
| Oh Yandex is AWESOME, especially for tech, porn, and
| piracy. None of its blocked. I get exactly what I'm looking
| for. No bullshit.
|
| And I don't care if it is Russian. Tells me that the US
| government wont be buying search history from them, or
| cooperating in any capacity. Thats actually a double-good.
| hedora wrote:
| They used to have a US office, which got me wondering if
| they're obligated to sell private user information to the
| US gov't.
|
| Here's their current list of offices:
|
| https://yandex.com/jobs/locations/
|
| So, maybe? (Better than "definitely", though...)
| mypetocean wrote:
| Yeah, I use DDG by default now, and only use Google for
| hard searches - and even then, I'm continually surprised by
| the frequency of terrible search results on Google these
| days.
| dcow wrote:
| Kagi has replaced DDG for me entirely. Now that you get
| unlimited searches, do you think it would for you, too?
| hedora wrote:
| Google's been losing in blind comparisons for over a decade
| (experiments:
|
| - Both have google branding -> competitor wins
|
| - Neither has google branding -> competitor wins
|
| - One (chosen randomly) has google branding -> google
| branding wins
|
| Yahoo search consistently beat them for a few years before
| Microsoft bought it and turned it into Bing. It doesn't
| surprise me at all that Yandex is also producing better
| results.
| konfusinomicon wrote:
| hotbot! now there's a name I haven't heard in a while! that
| was the first search engine I used regularly. it was the
| perfect place to find warcraft 2 cheats and magic the
| gathering deck ideas
| dylan604 wrote:
| you could always Ask Jeeves if you were looking for things
| too.
| Paul-Craft wrote:
| I used to prefer Dogpile:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogpile
| rkagerer wrote:
| It actually felt like one of the better pre-Google engines.
| viraptor wrote:
| In my experience it's not that there's better quality results
| found, but rather low quality results are skipped. There's a
| lot filtered by default + it's easy to click "block this
| domain" when you run into yet another stackoverflow copy. It
| means that when you're searching for code related things, you
| often get small relevant blogs in position 3+ rather than SEO
| spam.
|
| For example searching for "current time on JavaScript" on
| Google, I get SO, MDN, and basically a lot of SEO spam sites.
| Same thing on Kagi https://kagi.com/search?q=current+time+in+
| JavaScript&r=au&sh... ends with an actually interesting blog
| on position 5, link to moment.js on GH, further down posts
| about accuracy and about the Temporal API proposal, etc.
| JoshuaEN wrote:
| This is my experience as well. Low quality junk is often
| not present, and if it does show up, it's two mouse clicks
| to never see that domain again.
|
| Also the ability to promote high quality domains helps even
| more with this (though i have found one needs to be careful
| with pinning domains, as it can lead to irrelevant results
| being shown first because they have some if the same
| keywords).
| louthy wrote:
| When I first signed up for Kagi, I found myself just
| searching for fun. I hadn't had that feeling in forever (well
| apart from when Google was first launched)
|
| Very happy customer here.
| w1nst0nsm1th wrote:
| How does it compare to Brave ?
| sph wrote:
| I'm already a paying customer but all I can say is wow. It is
| rare to see companies offer more for less price, especially in
| this economy.
|
| Good job Kagi, seriously!
| slipperlobster wrote:
| Instant upgrade from the $5/mo plan to this. My biggest complaint
| about Kagi was that (artificial) ceiling looming over my head at
| 500 searches per month. Now, I can finally switch my work
| computer over to using Kagi and have zero worry.
|
| Nothing to complain about here, just overall very pleased.
| clnq wrote:
| Is there killer feature that Kagi has or is it just a marginal
| improvement over Google? I've tried a few of my last technical
| Google searches and got practically identical results. So I'm
| wondering if there's more. Is there $120/yr worth of _more_ here?
|
| Also, if anyone finds it substantially better, could you give
| some example queries on which it does better?
| dot5xdev wrote:
| I'm currently paying for Kagi. It's nice. But, so far I feel like
| it may only be like 2% better than Google, probably not enough to
| keep me long term.
|
| A lot of times the results are better on Kagi than Google, but
| not by much. It makes sense they're similar since Kagi uses
| Google's index (among others).
| sph wrote:
| > 2% better
|
| Not in my experience, and what about user tracking and
| pervasive advertising? You don't seem to include that in your
| comparison.
| dot5xdev wrote:
| Yeah, I'm strictly talking about search results. That's the
| main thing I care about. No ads is nice, but if I can't find
| information I need then that's not very useful to me.
| hovering_nox wrote:
| >user tracking
|
| You can use Google anonymously but you have to log in and
| leave your payment data with Kagi.
|
| EDIT: apparently they accept crypto
| sph wrote:
| Not very anonymous when 99% of websites on the internet use
| Google Analytics, so it's pretty easy to follow you around
| the web.
| smoldesu wrote:
| True, but a bit of a moot point if both search engines
| will indiscriminately route you to those websites
| anyways. It's not like I'm opting-out of that issue by
| using DuckDuckGo right now.
| xigoi wrote:
| Isn't Google Analytics blocked by pretty much any ad
| blocker?
| dpkirchner wrote:
| Being able to block domains (without an extension) makes Kagi
| at least 30% better on its own. Maybe more. It's absolutely a
| killer feature and one that Google themselves used to have.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| This is an advertisement.
| rizky05 wrote:
| [dead]
| ezfe wrote:
| Sir, this is Hacker News
| goda90 wrote:
| I don't see myself paying $10/month for search but I could see
| myself paying even more for a bundle of services that included
| search. Maybe a bunch of these companies that treat you like a
| customer instead of a product for advertisers can partner up and
| do a single login and subscription plan together.
| daft_pink wrote:
| Love Kagi. First search engine I've been willing to ditch google
| for.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| It is the first time I hear a out kagi. What for me, as a
| developer, would be the selling point for using kagi instead of
| say phind.com?
| rbmo wrote:
| The very first thing that comes to mind is their domain filter
| https://kagi.com/stats?stat=leaderboard
| esafak wrote:
| It's not focused on coding; it's general purpose.
| hardcopy wrote:
| I just signed up for ultimate two days ago. Oh well, I suppose
| the extra $15 is going to a good cause.
|
| edit: You can switch pro-rated, nice.
| SushiHippie wrote:
| Ultimate will be worth it in the next couple of weeks, cool
| features are coming ;) i'm in the beta and it's really great
| bank for buck
| user3939382 wrote:
| Done. The price was my only problem.
| m00dy wrote:
| anyone paying for kagi here ? how's it comparing to duckduckgo
| results ?
| unshavedyak wrote:
| Previously i used DDG and fell back to Startpage/Google
| constantly. With Kagi, i can't remember the last time i did
| that. I also get a lot of value out of FastGPT (a labs search
| thing from Kagi).
|
| Overall, i'm very happy with my starter subscription.
| CoryAlexMartin wrote:
| Echoing what others have said. When I used DuckDuckGo, I would
| have to resort to using Google all the time because Google's
| results were often better. Since switching to Kagi, I never
| feel the need to use Google anymore.
| CobaltFire wrote:
| It sounds hyperbolic, but using Kagi reminds me of back in 98
| or 99 when I first discovered Google. I can get results I want
| every single time without wading through garbage.
|
| I'm happy to pay for it.
| seventytwo wrote:
| Been paying for Kagi for about a year now. It's great and worth
| it. As good as google for search, but with much better tools
| and basically zero ad spam.
| r2_pilot wrote:
| I've heard about it, signed up the other day, didn't use it. I
| tried it today on a medical condition that's been hard to get
| good info on, and while it wasn't the first hit, there was a
| great reference fairly high up that I didn't find on Google.
| I'm working on budgeting for yet another subscription as I
| figure kagi will be my next go-to if AI doesn't outstrip it
| first. And probably even then(sometimes you have to use the
| Dead Internet).
| sph wrote:
| In my experience.
|
| DDG 6/10
|
| Brave Search 7/10
|
| Google 8/10
|
| Kagi 9/10
|
| Basically all I want is a search engine that does what I tell
| it to do, and doesn't try to be smarter than me, because it is
| not. My killer Kagi feature is the forum search. The only way
| to get real human opinions on things, rather than regurgitated
| blogspam that's pervasive on Google and even more on DDG and
| other smaller engines.
| neoromantique wrote:
| Been a paying customer for a year now, it's very much worth it.
| neysofu wrote:
| I've been a paying customer for more than a year, in my
| experience DDG is not even in the same league as Kagi. DDG
| provides a noticeably worse search experience than Google for
| most queries, whereas Kagi is either just as good or often
| better than Google.
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| i really wanted to ditch google and gave my best shot to DDG
| and just couldn't use it, had to go to !g all the time. been
| paying for Kagi close to a year and I only do !g when I am
| proactively seeking to look at SEO spam
| DanHulton wrote:
| Been paying for a long while now, I expect I'll keep paying a
| lot longer. It's very, very good.
|
| Occasionally, I'm on someone else's computer where I'm not
| signed in to Kagi, and I try DDG first, but I frequently resort
| to pulling out my phone and just searching there.
| [deleted]
| baliex wrote:
| Would love some stats in the near future of whether Google et al.
| are using these lists (blocked, lowered, raised, pinned) to their
| advantage somehow. Having said that, they have the data
| themselves, they just choose not to use it because it's not in
| their best interests..
| https://kagi.com/stats?stat=leaderboard&k=1
| [deleted]
| boringg wrote:
| I think Kagi sounds interesting but the business model is a tough
| one outside of niche HN types. E.g. I am interested but can't be
| bothered to pursue it as it seems like an unnecessary additional
| SAS model cost to my monthly budget.
|
| How does search quality really change my life?
|
| Entrenched behavior is tough to overcome especially ostensibly
| free products.
| sshine wrote:
| > _How does search quality really change my life?_
|
| A lot. I make dozens and dozens of searches on an average day.
|
| I'm also somewhat cheap when it comes to subscriptions.
|
| Throwing $10/mo. for something I can get "for free" is not a
| light choice. But... 1) I don't like Google's
| philosophy, I don't like being the product, I like being a
| customer 2) Google Search results have gradually gotten
| worse, mostly because of SEO spam 3) I don't really trust
| DuckDuckGo or Startpage, their model is essentially also
| advertising
|
| I still use Google Search / Maps when I want to buy something,
| i.e., when I want ads.
|
| I prefer to not go to the mall for recreation or work either.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| How much time do you waste wading through bad search results?
|
| Would you pay $10/mo to fix that problem?
|
| For me, the answer has been yes. I don't think that is true of
| everyone (but maybe some people can live in the free plan
| limits!)
|
| I started with the free plan, made it my default search engine
| and then tried to measure how often I felt like I had "lost
| something" once my free tier was up. And yeah, having to go
| back to Google or DuckDuckGo felt like I lost a really good
| tool and was using a mediocre replacement.
| sshine wrote:
| > maybe some people can live in the free plan limits
|
| When the free plan was 50 searches, that lasted me less than
| a day.
|
| Now that the free plan is 300 searches, it'd last me a few
| days.
|
| It was enough for me to get hooked.
| jwmcq wrote:
| > How does search quality really change my life?
|
| Ask this to someone who remembers when Google first appeared.
|
| I am not a Kagi user, but am seriously considering it after a
| number of months having to dig through at least 8 results of
| paywalled or possibly AI-generated pages for almost every
| Google query; seriously, I just did a search for 'python
| concatenate list' on google and it was worse than I expected -
| the official docs weren't even on the first two pages and even
| the helpful Stack Overflow answers were the 5th result down -
| give it a go, the results are trash.
|
| I google things at least 20 times a day, and probably so do
| you. I would pay for something that can cut out the bollocks -
| if Kagi can follow through, they'll have a customer.
| rajamaka wrote:
| I just ditched search altogether for questions like that and
| use ChatGPT. Has improved my workflow so much.
| constantly wrote:
| Yep, I think I'm going to try Kagi. I am so, so tired and
| exhausted of every search result on Google being "the top X
| in ${this_month_of_this_year}" with a list of Amazon
| affiliate links. I append Reddit to the searches for products
| now, but notice on higher margin items you can click into
| Reddit user history of people giving their "opinion" and see
| that every post they make is about that particular product.
| prepend wrote:
| I'm waiting to pay $10/month for search+email. That I will do
| as I also keep meaning to switch off gmail to a pay service.
| iruoy wrote:
| You can get unlimited email domains/accounts for $19/year.
| Assuming you don't receive more than 200 emails a day.
|
| https://migadu.com/pricing/
| sshine wrote:
| I pay $5/mo. for 30GB at FastMail, and $10/mo. for Kagi
| Search.
|
| I switched away from Gmail years ago; the risk of getting
| locked out of my digital identity with no recourse is worth
| more than $5/mo. Not having my electronics receipts, plane
| tickets and newsletters datamined for an improved ad
| experience is just a perk.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > How does search quality really change my life?
|
| There are tons of information workers who are dependent on
| search in their work - or if they're not, could work much
| better with good quality search.
|
| The examples are really too many to list, but it really depends
| on the person. When it comes to not spending a dollar, people
| will create the most incredible and reality-defying reasons. So
| I'd expect 99% of Google users to keep using Google, or maybe
| even stop using web search when Google becomes completely
| unusable. Then they'll say "I have no need to search for things
| anyway".
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the business model is a tough one outside of niche HN types_
|
| There are lucrative bundling opportunities.
|
| I am waiting fora corporate product; it's notable that Google
| Workspace still subjects you to ads in search. That's not only
| a data leak. It's also a constant attention tax on your
| knowledge workers.
| freediver wrote:
| Vlad here from Kagi. We are building one, would you like to
| chat? Would love to understand your needs. Please reach out
| to vlad@kagi.com
| bradgessler wrote:
| Hi Vlad,
|
| You might want the blog to prominently link back to
| https://kagi.com. "Home" took me to https://blog.kagi.com,
| I tried clicking on the pricing table image, etc. but
| nothing got me to the actual product.
|
| I had to manually enter https://kagi.com to see the product
| behind the blog.
| dcow wrote:
| Search quality improves my life. Like actually I'm a happier
| searcher since Kagi and I search more frequently because I have
| increased confidence that I'll get meaningful results. I don't
| grumble like I used to every time I had to wade through a pool
| of SEO shit spam. But that's just me.
| andrewaylett wrote:
| Search needs to be paid for one way or another, the bill might
| as well go to someone with my best interests in mind.
| hellowoods wrote:
| Presearch is decentralized, private, free, and pays you to run a
| node.
|
| https://presearch.com
| nipperkinfeet wrote:
| Is it truly worth it? Nothing appears when I search for adult
| content. The safe search function has been disabled.
| kup0 wrote:
| Adult searches work for me, I disabled safe search on
| https://kagi.com/settings?p=privacy
|
| and it seems to be working fine?
| prepend wrote:
| I wish there was a way to just buy 10,000 searches as a block and
| charge down against it.
|
| I don't search that much. I don't want another monthly service
| fee. But I love the idea of paying for search.
|
| Id happily pay $5 for 300 searches, but don't want to do that
| every month.
|
| This seems like the buffet or gym model where they want people
| just mindlessly paying and then not using it that much.
| dbrueck wrote:
| I hear you, but it's also really hard from the service
| provider's perspective because - for many people at least - the
| allotment of searches starts to become a hinderance on using
| it.
|
| By making it feel a finite resource, some percentage of the
| users will start to ration their use of your service and/or do
| some deliberation before using it ("I kinda want to look that
| up, but I don't know if I want to spend one of my searches"),
| and introducing that kind of usage friction can even lead to a
| subtle resentment of your service.
| arp242 wrote:
| Yeah, exactly. I looked at Kagi last week (first time I had
| heard of it), when the $10/month plan was "only" 1,000
| searches a month and "unlimited" was $25. While I _think_
| that I 'll probably stay well within 1,000 searches, I'm also
| not sure, and it's just not something I want to have to worry
| about (it's ~33/day on average and I doubt I'll ever hit it,
| but still...)
|
| One of the reasons I decided to skip Kagi for now.
| somsak2 wrote:
| There's a reason most non-ad-supported, profitable SaaS
| businesses have switched to a subscription.
| TehShrike wrote:
| You might want to look at rigging something up with their API.
| To use their API, you pre-pay for credits - 25$ for 1000
| searches via the API.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >This seems like the buffet or gym model where they want people
| just mindlessly paying and then not using it that much.
|
| I see this as the point to any subscription model. Of course
| they want you paying for more than you use/consume.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Fair enough. Sell in bulk but have some minimum credits per
| month requirement. More or less, use'em or lose'em. Not super
| painful, they are paying customers :) But enough to keep it
| fair to the vendor. This way there's a path to paying for
| those who don't want or need a monthly unlimited
| subscription.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I really liked the suggestion from somewhere else on this
| topic of paying a set fee for an amount of credits to be
| charged against. When the balance gets low, allow them to
| re-up. Of course, there shouldn't be some BS type of
| expiration date like food products or airline miles. Pay as
| you type of plans. In that way, you are paying for exactly
| what you use, and not just donating each month like it's a
| charity.
| LapsangGuzzler wrote:
| True, but there's also the reality that maintenance costs
| increase over time for software projects as upstream vendors
| change their pricing models and codebases grow in size and
| complexity. I can see why a product like Kagi wants to keep
| their traffic tied to recurring revenue instead of selling a
| bunch of credits upfront.
| moonchrome wrote:
| I think the point is having stable recurring revenue. Giving
| you unlimited usage means on average you'll be paying more
| than you use, but, unless you're seriously abusing it, you
| can technically cost them more than you pay.
|
| Just like you can go to the gym every day - if everyone with
| the membership did that they would not be able to function.
| But it doesn't mean _you_ can 't.
| prepend wrote:
| Right and this is the reason I don't like subscriptions.
|
| Id rather buy things.
|
| I don't want a car subscription. I want to buy a car.
|
| I don't want a book subscription. I want to buy a car.
|
| I don't a compute subscription. I want to buy compute hours.
|
| Etc etc
| rkagerer wrote:
| >>I want to buy compute hours.
|
| Or a computER.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Back when Netflix/Prime were the king of paid premium (ad
| free) streaming essentially being the only players, there
| were definite months where I barely watched any content and
| I was a pure source of subsidy for all the other viewers.
| There are other times, where I swear they (Netflix) start
| throttling my use to sub-VHS quality. Macroblocking the
| size of your fist that looks like a 320x240 image scaled to
| the size of my TV.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Cars are the one thing I don't want to buy. It's not an
| asset. It depreciates.
|
| I'd like to pay a reasonable monthly subscription with a
| small fee per mile once I go over some minimum for my tier.
|
| Once autonomous vehicles are stable, I'm presuming I'll be
| able to hail a car in 5 or 10 mins via app. I guess the
| only question is what to do in full-on emergencies. For
| example, when the zombie apocalypse begins, or the aliens
| final attack. How do I get out of town?
| rfrey wrote:
| Isn't that a lease?
| adrianmonk wrote:
| Similar use case that actually happens: hurricanes.
| Entire large cities evacuate. The Miami and Houston metro
| areas are both over 5 million in population.
|
| Forecasts give days of notice, so I guess an autonomous
| vehicle ride-hailing service could have a million extra
| cars drives themselves in overnight. But refueling them
| would be a challenge. It's already a challenge for normal
| cars today (without using more fuel by rearranging fleets
| of cars between cities).
|
| Also, sometimes they change traffic flow for evacuations,
| like contraflow lane reversal
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraflow_lane_reversal)
| or using the shoulders as extra lanes. I wonder how well
| autonomous vehicle software handles that.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I've been a Kagi customer since the beta, I'm still happy to pay
| for the privacy and for certain UX improvements they have, for
| instance being able to give higher or lower weight to different
| websites in search results. I do _not_ think the quality of their
| search is any better than DDG or Google. If I am being honest, it
| 's actually worse for a lot of things, if you don't factor in
| that you can block bad websites without a plugin.
|
| Even paying for Kagi, I _still_ go back to Google for any really
| open-ended searches where the search engine 's ML can actually be
| helpful. For known-item searches ("fandango showtimes Seattle"),
| or simple searches ("pumpkin bread recipe") which are fully 90%+
| of what I search for, Kagi is just fine, and they aren't after my
| identity (just my money).
| runeofdoom wrote:
| This is going to get me to try Kagi.
|
| I've thought about it several times, enough that I did track my
| searches for a week. Between work, hobbies, and just life I
| searched (overwhelmingly DDG and Bing) over a thousand times in a
| week. (A evening of prep for my tabletop RPG racked up over a
| hundred all by itself.)
|
| I've bailed on Google - wading though the flood of SEO'd garbage
| just stopped being worth it. Bing and DDG have been mostly
| working, but I definitely feel like they're missing something.
| $10 a month is definitely worth it to try it out, and if it works
| for me, worth it to keep paying. I'd been hesitating because
| worrying about my search count seemed like a substantial negative
| for me.
| sshine wrote:
| > over a thousand times in a week
|
| That's a lot!
|
| I perform 500-900 searches a month.
|
| I really enjoy Kagi's caching image search; it often lets me
| avoid visiting websites when I'm just looking for graphics.
| Going on Kagi and reading summaries and viewing cached material
| gives me the "I don't feel like going out" vibe, but on the
| Internet. One step closer to offline.
| freeAgent wrote:
| Be sure to look into the results customization options. You may
| not need them, but they can also make the engine feel so much
| more tuned to your needs.
| Lammy wrote:
| I like the "Blast from the Past" unit in search results. Real
| sick of Google's neurotic obsession with recency as a stand-in
| for relevance to the point that you can tell a lot of spammy
| sites just fake ${CURRENT_YEAR}.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Hmm most of the things I used search for are now covered by
| ChatGPT (for which I use the api which costs cents).
|
| I don't think web search is still important enough for me to pay
| for. A year ago it would have been. I originally signed up with
| kagi but I wasn't too impressed and then they came with the
| limited plans and that was it. Not sure if I'll go back now.
|
| And yeah like the article says it was priced for "silicon valley
| bros". Even $10 is a lot on a Spanish salary still. But it's
| doable and 300 for $5 is a decent deal IMO. I wouldn't do that
| many.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| so is that better than using the chatgpt subscription?
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Much better imo and much cheaper unless you do 200 chats per
| day or something :P
|
| Why is it better? More integration capabilities. You're not
| limited to the webpage and app, you can use it anywhere you
| want. Not constantly kicking me out to log in again every few
| days (their web does this). The ability to select the model
| and temperature (a measure of how creative the LLM is). Also
| the default model seems to be much more recent.
|
| And the price. If you use it sparingly you might be paying as
| little as 20 cents a month instead of 20 dollars. Not
| exaggerating but it depends on the size of questions and
| responses. But really to make it cost as much as that 20$ per
| month with the API you really have to go hell for leather
| with it.
| frabcus wrote:
| I also really like that I'm learning tooling that lets me
| easily switch model provider later.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| what do you use to hit the api? is there a good CLI tool for
| linux?
| _nhynes wrote:
| I use the OpenAI playground because I'm paranoid that third
| party frontends will steal my API keys and I don't have
| enough time to audit the code or set up firewall rules.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| You can set up a spending limit on the API anyway. It's
| pretty low risk IMO.
| Zetobal wrote:
| Not the op but I use chatblade[0] on the cli, chatgpt-next-
| web[1] as webgui and quivr[2] for multimodal stuff
| files/images/audio/video. atm everything goes over a azure
| openai endpoint but would love to infere an llm locally.
|
| [0] https://github.com/npiv/chatblade
|
| [1] https://github.com/Yidadaa/ChatGPT-Next-Web/
|
| [2] https://github.com/StanGirard/quivr
| nani8ot wrote:
| chatgpt-cli is a great tui
| frabcus wrote:
| Simon Willison's `llm` is an excellent command line client,
| and now has `llm chat` as well as `-c` for ongoing
| conversations.
|
| https://llm.datasette.io/en/stable/
| wkat4242 wrote:
| I use the ChatGPT bot for matrix mainly. I've tried some
| other frontends that are more like ChatGPT web but I keep
| going back to matrix because it's just so handy. I have all
| my other chats in there too, through bridges.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Much like youtube, I'm fine paying $10/yr, but $10/mo is pretty
| steep.
| RantyDave wrote:
| Aside, possibly, but didn't Kagi used to be a company that
| collected money for shareware authors or am I hallucinating?
| jorams wrote:
| Yes. Quoting Wikipedia[1]:
|
| > Kagi.com was an e-commerce micropayment platform often used
| for shareware and e-book purchases, operating from Sept 1994 to
| July 2016.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kagi
| kup0 wrote:
| Excited to see this. Thinking about using this on mobile and all
| PCs I use now that there is no worry about hitting a quota.
| HNArg024 wrote:
| I almost never comment here on HN (or anywhere actually), but I
| feel the need to express how happy I am that I found (lost in a
| comment a few days ago) this service.
|
| For the past three or so years I have tried half a dozen times to
| leave Google Search. Tried DDG, Brave Search and some others I
| can't remember now. But the "poor" quality of results had me
| going to Google for half of my searches, and after a while, just
| Google again, for convenience.
|
| Now, I'm at 44/100 trial searches and I already know I'm going to
| pay for this. It's like using Google on 2008 plus without ads. It
| just work wonders, and I haven't even started to play with the
| filter to raise/lower certain domains, which I think it's a
| fantastic tool to have.
|
| Great work Kagi Team!
| t0bia_s wrote:
| I don't like the idea of tightening search queries to credit
| card, however they add option to pay by crypto... That is good
| approach. But still I refuse to pay subscription model for
| product that I wouldn't use regularly.
| richardw wrote:
| Keen to try it. I would worry that over time, poor people
| wouldn't get access as they do with ad-supported services. Maybe
| search credit donations could be pooled somehow, so I could do $5
| for me, $2.50 for students/emerging economies.
| xlii wrote:
| I dropped of Kagi after price change, mostly because I don't
| think search hit should be something I need to keep in mind when
| using search engine.
|
| This is a change in good direction, and I'll happily check it
| once again.
| zamadatix wrote:
| How many is unlimited? Presumably they don't get unlimited
| searches for $10 and, inevitably, someone will use more than they
| planned for. How much more than they expected is considered "fair
| use" or however they want to term it and why can't I know that
| before I sign up instead of guess I'm within what they are
| thinking?
| zakary wrote:
| Whatever the cap is, I'm sure it's a lot higher than google
| will let you do before they start rate limiting you or making
| you do a captcha for every search. Pretty much all search
| services have some cap, after which they will put up roadblocks
| to slow you down
| Lammy wrote:
| I've been getting captchaed by Google just for using
| `intitle:` or `inurl:` modifiers.
| gretch wrote:
| > I'm sure it's a lot higher than google will let you do
| before they start rate limiting you
|
| Do you have any basis for this assumption?
| gkbrk wrote:
| Google throws me around 4-5 CAPTCHAs a month with regular
| usage. So far, Kagi hasn't made me do any "find the
| firehoses".
| gnud wrote:
| I'm assuming they disallow bot use in their TOS. So they can
| probably offer unlimited searches that you run yourself by
| typing in the terms.
| crisp wrote:
| While I think your questions are definitely relevant, in
| practice, you search less than you think.
|
| I consider myself as a heavy search engine user but, based on
| Kagi stats, I was surprised how much less I actually searched
| compared to my estimate. My actual range is about 500-800
| queries a month when I originally estimated upwards 1500
| queries a month.
|
| Same thing with my friends.
| dcminter wrote:
| You can block domains you don't want to see results from. With
| that feature I'm not sure it even needs to deliver better results
| than Google to be compelling.
| wackget wrote:
| Call me tight-fisted or naive or whatever but I don't see
| $10/month as a remotely attractive price point and I don't see
| how they can justify it, especially when their results are still
| powered at least in part by external indexers.
|
| $10/month can get you terabytes of media on streaming platforms.
|
| $1-2/month is what I would pay.
| user3939382 wrote:
| It's a very fair price. If anything we have to hope it's enough
| that they can survive.
| europeanNyan wrote:
| At the end of the day, it comes down to what your time is worth
| to you. I do about 1500 searches per month and paying 10EUR per
| month for those searches to actually be relevant makes it a no
| brainer.
| MrVandemar wrote:
| You're not paying for terabytes of media. You are paying for
| time and a reduced cognitive load.
|
| I think it's a fair price if you live in the US. I'd pay it,
| except I don't live in the US and our currency isn't great at
| the moment, and I don't exactly get overpaid at my job, and the
| cost of everything is rising, so I personally can't afford it
| ATM. But it seems reasonable to me.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Assuming you've already paid $10 for your terabytes of
| streaming and that wasn't the last dollar you owned, how does
| paying for a completely different thing relate to your media
| streaming?
|
| I can buy potatoes that last me for a week for the same price
| as for what I'd pay to just get a coffee, but if I've already
| bought my potatoes and have money to spare, why couldn't I buy
| also the coffee?
| apricot wrote:
| I mostly use Duckduckgo these days but fall back on Google for
| non-English searches because DDG is lacking in that area.
|
| Kagi users, how good is Kagi for non-English searches?
| warpspin wrote:
| Can only speak for German searches, but the results are good
| there.
| sshine wrote:
| For Danish searches, simple queries get confused with
| Norwegian/Swedish results.
|
| Admittedly, I haven't said anywhere that I prefer Danish
| results when the query is the same in two languages. My
| operating system and browser are not configured to reveal my
| nationality. The only way Kagi would know is if they factored
| in my IP address. Which I can deduce that they don't. I prefer
| it that way.
| uasi wrote:
| For me, Japanese search quality is on par with Google most of
| the time.
| joshstrange wrote:
| This is great news. I've been paying for a couple months now and
| I've been happy with the results and the previous limits weren't
| something I even needed to worry about in the end (I did worry at
| the start but only because I had no idea how many searches I do
| to gauge which plan I needed).
| lordfrito wrote:
| This is great I just signed up! Been wanting to bail on free
| search for a while now, hoping paid search will prioritize users
| needs above all else. Crossing fingers they can go the distance,
| scale, and stick around a while.
| pjmq wrote:
| I've been a paying subscriber to Kagi for over a year and I'm sad
| to say it just gets in my way and I often find myself just
| wishing I was using Google.
|
| I've kept it thus far because I believe in the mission but man...
| I get why other promising search engines have fallen to Google.
| hosteur wrote:
| > I'm sad to say it just gets in my way
|
| Care to elaborate on how it gets in your way? And what, in your
| opinion, Google does better? I use Kagi myself and I am very
| happy with it.
| BoppreH wrote:
| Three years ago, I migrated from Gmail to FastMail because I was
| afraid of losing access to my digital life on Google's whim.
|
| Two years ago, I found out that my favorite Youtube creators were
| all on Nebula.
|
| One year ago, I switched my phone to LineageOS to get security
| updates a little longer.
|
| A month ago, I installed OpenStreetMaps because Google Maps got
| really bad at showing points-of-interest.
|
| And today, Kagi removed the only obstacle that kept me on Google
| Search. I'm looking forward to building my filter list.
|
| After accidentally de-googlifying myself, I might ditch Windows
| next. It feels really nice using products that respect me, as
| opposed to services that are actively hostile because of
| advertisers.
| rjh29 wrote:
| Yeah you sound like someone who should not be using Windows in
| any way shape or form. The telemetry and lack of control? Try
| Linux out.
| BoppreH wrote:
| I'm wary of telemetry, but willing to accept it. It's the
| lack of _respect_ that gets to me. "Yes/Maybe Later"?
| Showing me a fake Windows update screen once a month to try
| to get me to use an online account and switch to Edge?
| Starting a Bing search when the start menu doesn't recognize
| an application's name? Pre-installing games with
| advertisement and microtransactions?
|
| It's a commercial operating system, for Christ's sake, stop
| pushing sleazy features. They are quickly burning through all
| the trust acquired over decades.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Yeah, Windows 8 was kind of ineffably bad. I know exactly
| effing why Windows 10 is bad; nothing ineffable about it.
| vanchor3 wrote:
| My favorite was when they wanted everyone to switch over
| from Internet Explorer to Edge (this was before support was
| dropped), so attempting to search "Internet Explorer" in
| the start menu caused it to override it with Edge instead.
|
| This of course was quite annoying because we still had many
| applications at the time that (unfortunately) required
| Internet Explorer. It was even more annoying because when
| attempting to get to "Internet Options" or "File Explorer",
| it automatically replaced those with Edge, which is not at
| all helpful.
|
| This effort was also completely undone by the fact that if
| you misspelled Internet Explorer it would still come right
| up as the first option.
|
| I'm still upset that they've removed most Control Panel
| results from the start menu search as well, because after
| all these years the Settings app is still incomplete.
| VHRanger wrote:
| The only lockin I have remaining to windows is video games
| really
| underdeserver wrote:
| Check out Proton.
| justinclift wrote:
| Anyone know if the "Universal Summarizer" is reliable, or does it
| make stuff up?
| pdx6 wrote:
| I think $5-$10 is a good price point for just the privacy aspect.
| As far as search, it's about 90% kagi and 10% Google if I don't
| like the kagi results. Maps could use some work and I'm always
| jumping back into Google maps.
|
| I don't use any of the other features.
| distract8901 wrote:
| I'm kind of shocked to see a company in this day and age making
| their service more affordable as it becomes more popular.
|
| I'm very happy with this service. Worth every cent and then some.
| avereveard wrote:
| I would really love to see an API, possibly with a pay per
| request pricing.
| baggachipz wrote:
| They do have exactly such a thing:
| https://help.kagi.com/kagi/api/overview.html
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| Any of the DDG search libraries on GiHub + ChatGPT-turbo-3.5
| is cheaper than this, especially if you need to do a lot of
| searches and then apply a heuristic to narrow them down.
| Doesn't seem very competitive.
| avereveard wrote:
| Ah wonderful! Looks fairly inexpensive as well, and they have
| a summarisation option that seems great, I'll need to play a
| bit with it.
| [deleted]
| p3rls wrote:
| A good deal worse than google for results in my niche (Korean
| entertainment). Oh well.
| arealaccount wrote:
| This is great, I did the trial and the reason I chose to not
| continue is I hated having to think "is this search worth it" for
| everything.
| james2doyle wrote:
| I like the statement they made on their jobs page:
|
| Core Front-end Team
|
| Passion for creating delightful and swift user interfaces.
|
| Proficiency in HTML, CSS, and _an understanding that JavaScript
| can be used sparingly to enhance, not create, product
| experiences._
|
| Ability to prototype rapidly.
|
| Fun fact: At Kagi, we prioritize speed, to the point where *all
| functionalities of Kagi Search (except Stripe checkout and Maps)
| work perfectly without JavaScript*. We see JavaScript as a tool
| to enhance the UX, not create it.
| threatofrain wrote:
| Ah, their backend is in Crystal!
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| That frontend team statement alone makes it almost worth
| switching and thereby supporting their work. It is rare these
| days to hear such wise words.
| autoexec wrote:
| I like the sound of it, but I do notice that the link
| https://kagi.com/search?q=what+is+%25&r=no_region&sh=Qd1RlT2...
| which someone posted elsewhere in this discussion as an example
| doesn't work with JS disabled.
| jorams wrote:
| It should work without JS. It even works in eww (in Emacs).
| Looking at the source of the page, there's a redirect (meta
| http-equiv="refresh") wrapped in a <noscript>-tag to the same
| URL but with "/html" before the path.[1]. It seems the
| browser you tried doesn't handle that.
|
| [1]: https://kagi.com/html/search?q=what+is+%25&r=no_region&s
| h=Qd...
| tills13 wrote:
| In my opinion, in not using JavaScript they are missing out on
| a really nice DX. This is the kind of app that could be highly
| optimized _despite_ using React or something similar. Knee-
| capping your hiring to Make A Point (tm) is silly.
| james2doyle wrote:
| Nice DX at the cost of UX.
|
| The current state of web development has been ruined by
| putting developer experience over user experience. A great
| example that was shared on HN a few days ago:
| https://ericwbailey.website/published/modern-health-
| framewor...
|
| This person couldn't use the site. But at least the developer
| got to see red squiggles when they didn't format their object
| properly!
|
| If you see "not using JS as much" as knee-capping your
| hiring, then you are putting your personal preferences ahead
| of what is good for the users.
| rkagerer wrote:
| Can someone offer some history on Kagi? It's founder / roots? I'm
| curious.
|
| Also what specific features are in the mysterious Ultimate plan?
|
| And what was the domain before it was a search engine?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12200972
|
| Thanks!
| sshine wrote:
| > what specific features are in the mysterious Ultimate plan?
|
| Ultimate used to be unlimited searches.
|
| Now that the Professional plan is unlimited, this seems like a
| quick attempt to provide some value to those with Ultimate. My
| bet is that many will move to Professional, those who stay will
| mainly do it for the support, and the mystery is just a cherry
| on top. I'm guessing extended API and AI features are among the
| coming features.
| [deleted]
| lmm wrote:
| What's the language support like? I can find what I need in
| English, but I really struggle to find good search results in
| Japanese - but if that isn't something they've been paying
| attention to then they're unlikely to be good at it.
| xigoi wrote:
| Is there any tool you can run on your browser history to
| determine whether 300 searches/month would be enough for you?
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