[HN Gopher] Try Switching to Kagi
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Try Switching to Kagi
Author : Ch00k
Score : 558 points
Date : 2025-04-29 07:08 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (daringfireball.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (daringfireball.net)
| decimalenough wrote:
| > no unwanted AI (but very good AI results if you want -- just
| end your query with a question mark)
|
| TIL! I'm a paying Kagi user and I didn't even know this feature
| existed.
| jessekv wrote:
| !code will get you into the proper code assistant.
|
| I'd love it if it supported custom assistants though.
|
| For example, !joost (the name of my AI language tutor)
|
| Edit: I got this working.
| sitkack wrote:
| What do you mean by custom assistants because you can make
| your !<word> assistants with your own prompt and the model of
| your choice.
|
| Do you want !joost to hit and endpoint of your choosing?
| jessekv wrote:
| No, I was looking in the wrong place in the settings:
| "search" > "advanced" > "custom bangs". I see now you can
| assign a bang directly when you make a custom assistant.
| Very handy!
| sitkack wrote:
| From https://kagi.com/assistant you can also click on the
| down "Model Dropdown Chooser" and there is an entry to
| make your own assistants.
| al_borland wrote:
| Also worth noting, the Kagi assistant is now available to all
| paid Kagi users. This gives you conversational chat with a few
| ChatGPT models, Gemini, Llamas, Nova, Deepseek, and other.
|
| https://kagi.com/assistant
|
| Additional details on the blog post about it.
|
| https://blog.kagi.com/assistant-for-all
| ac29 wrote:
| > https://kagi.com/assistant
|
| Its subtly annoying that assistant.kagi.com doesnt work but
| translate.kagi.com does
| freediver wrote:
| We heard you!
| louthy wrote:
| This is one of my favourite features. The UX is so god damn
| simple that it makes switching to an AI response so
| ridiculously trivial, I love it.
| coreyh14444 wrote:
| Been using Kagi (paid) for a few months now and I call it Google
| circa 2016. Just works pretty well, doesn't try to do too much.
| With ChatGPT doing search pretty well, I only really use Kagi for
| what I think of as "classic search" and it does what I want.
|
| And thanks JGruber for teaching me about !g + bangs. Useful!
| Ezhik wrote:
| Kagi also lets you make custom bangs - I've got Google on !f
| and !h in addition to !g (sorry Flickr and Haskell users) to
| deal with typos.
| submeta wrote:
| Thanks to this community I switched to Kagi a couple of weeks
| ago. And immediately paid for the service. It is what Google used
| to be. Non-polluted search results. Plus: I can view images!
| Google won't show me too many images anymore, just products.
|
| Never would have thought that my de-googling would take such a
| long time. First switched emails and calendar to fastmail years
| ago, then google drive to dropbox and onedrive, and finally
| search to kagi and perplexity. Took me ten years.
| lcsh0s wrote:
| have you considered proton for emails?
| aitchnyu wrote:
| What does Kagi assistant (every plan has sub SOTA a few days
| back) lack compared to Perplexity?
| therein wrote:
| Bought a sub a year or so ago, and I'd say in the last 6 months
| especially, I never had to go to Google. Finally I am glad to say
| I no longer use Google for search or email.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| I tried every search mentioned by the author in Google verbatim,
| and the government's website was always first. In fact, the whole
| first page was only government websites from multiple countries
| for "travel to UK".
|
| But everytime this issue is brought up by people, I ask them to
| share the keywords they searched and the results they expected,
| and it always becomes blatantly clear that it's a user issue.
|
| I haven't personally noticed any drop in results quality on
| Google in the decades I've used it.
| orhmeh09 wrote:
| Perhaps you are lucky to stick to happy paths or are not
| particularly discerning. It's real.
| https://www.404media.co/google-search-really-has-gotten-wors...
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| Or maybe I'm better at selecting the right keywords? Or maybe
| I search like a real person and not like a researcher that is
| only talking about product reviews?
|
| > They found that, overall, "higher-ranked pages are on
| average more optimized, more monetized with affiliate
| marketing, and they show signs of lower text quality.
|
| Besides "signs of lower text quality", this doesn't in fact
| say much about the quality of the results at all. Seems like
| their research is pretty low quality too.
| troupo wrote:
| I am a real person, and sponsored links will often span the
| entire results page with relevant links being 4th-6th.
| mistercheph wrote:
| LOL, gotta love "just get better at picking search keywords
| bro..." as the retort in defense of google's trash results.
|
| Here's an easy one for you: Try googling "div" after you
| scroll past the ads, AI overview, wikipedia summary, and
| maps results, and finally get to the first result it's....
| w3schools, which nobody has ever wanted to be the result of
| their search query ever.
|
| Kagi's first result is for the DIV ticker, and there is
| legitimate ambiguity in the search term, and the second
| result is for MDN.
|
| Kagi can't guess perfectly what I'm searching for, but it
| won't triple down on a potentially bad guess like google
| does (imagine you are looking for the div ticker, search,
| and have to scoff and add another keyword) and it won't
| ever return links to universally despised trash websites
| that are actually just abstract financial instruments to
| perform arbitrage between cost of SEO and adsense revenue.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| https://i.imgur.com/RxSYGIe.png
|
| What's wrong with w3schools being the first result? It's
| not the best resource ever for sure, but it's not a spam
| website either.
|
| You can't see everything in my screenshot, but the
| results in order are:
|
| 1. w3schools 2. Mozilla's documentation 3. The Cambridge
| dictionary 4. Some Wikipedia page about what the term is
| in the context of mythology 5. More websites about the
| HTML term
|
| I don't see ANYTHING that isn't what someone would expect
| here, or someone should consider spam or low quality.
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| > w3schools, which nobody has ever wanted to be the
| result of their search query ever.
|
| I think you're living in the past. The w3schools of today
| isn't the w3schools from 10 years ago. For precision and
| detailed info I still go to MDN, but for a good
| comprehensive overview of the tag/property/what-have-you,
| w3schools is really good.
| philwelch wrote:
| https://archive.is/c1iDr
| mrweasel wrote:
| When trying the "travel to UK." in Google I get the same result
| as suggested in the article. The issue is the "Sponsored"
| results (which is a stupid name for scams). They take up the
| entire page and are obviously not what you're searching for,
| but some of them seems official enough, if you don't know that
| everything from the UK government follow a very specific design
| language and will alway be under gov.uk.
|
| My parents ran into the same issue trying to cancel a
| subscription, some scammer buys the first results, makes it
| look decent enough, but then charges you EUR100 for an
| otherwise free service. The real result is down below the
| "Sponsored" links.
|
| Trying the same search on DuckDuckGo or Ecosia will yield ads
| for hotels, AirBNB and organized tours, which are related to
| travelling to the UK, but it's clearly not related to ETA.
|
| In the article there's a quote: "Google has worked hard to
| eliminate truly fraudulent websites from ending up in its
| results," ... Yes, from their search results, if you want to
| run your scam on Google you have to pay them, but if you do
| they'll move your page to the top.
|
| Google is actively enabling scammers at this point, don't
| support them, switch to basically ANY other search engine. I
| don't care if it's Bing, that still way better than Google at
| this point.
| esseph wrote:
| I feel _exactly_ the same way! It makes me wonder what the hell
| I look for on the internet vs the users complaining about the
| search results!
| jacekm wrote:
| I suspect the secret sauce might be uBlock Origin. Even with
| basic, default filters it transforms Google into a vastly
| different experience.
| rspoerri wrote:
| I keep forgetting how bad search was before I switched to kagi.
| In a very rare moment where I don't find anything useful, I
| sometimes go to Google or other services, however I have not
| found any better results in the last year, rather I keep finding
| much more spam, advertisements and useless duplicates. Also image
| search has improved a lot, the only Google service I keep using
| is Google Maps.
| internet_points wrote:
| The top four hits on duckduckgo are from gov.uk (I did a "region-
| less" search).
|
| The ddg AI assist shows links to gov.uk and visitbritain.com
| (which says "Please note that www.gov.uk is the only official
| place to apply for an ETA.")
|
| That said, I do get scammy links from ddg some times too, and
| have been tempted to try kagi because of that.
| sixtyj wrote:
| Serious question, so DuckDuckGo is not good enough?
| rspoerri wrote:
| With DDG I kept looking for better results, which I typically
| found, not so with Kagi.
| foresterre wrote:
| DuckDuckGo had a noticeable drop in quality a few years ago.
|
| I think they stopped using the Yandex index at some point and
| solely used Bing's index. This may have been the cause.
|
| I tried kagi some time ago, and I liked it a lot for similar
| reasons as the author. It has everything which made DuckDuckGo
| such a joy to use, and reliably good sesrch results. I also
| love the filter site and boost options, and the fact that the
| most used are shared on a "leaderboard".
|
| The part I didn't love was the (understable, but annoying) need
| to login. This is especially a pain when you use a lot of
| different devices, delete cookies and friends regularly or use
| private browser windows. I tried using the method where you
| need to supply the ligin token manually, but, if I recall
| correctly, it was a painful experience because once you logged
| in elsewhere it would change, so it became an effort to keep
| the token in sync manually on all devices.
| sixtyj wrote:
| Thanks.
|
| Need to login will repel a lot of people who would test
| quality of Kagi search otherwise. But they want paying users,
| not lurkers.
| Terretta wrote:
| The need to login, to be associated with a profile, is a
| feature, not a bug.
|
| Elsewhere, you are associated with a profile, both before
| logging in, and then if ever logged in, that association
| persists logged in or not. One of these feels more honest.
| sph wrote:
| I haven't used it in 5+ years, but it was terrible for any non-
| US result. Also, at the time the crappy blogspam always found a
| way to surface to the first page, which is a major deal breaker
| I have with qwant and Ecosia.
| ziddoap wrote:
| I have absolutely no issue with DuckDuckGo, for what it's
| worth.
|
| I know people here absolutely love Kagi and would defend it to
| the death, but I cannot fathom paying a subscription fee for a
| limited number of searches.
|
| I'm guessing that I just don't search the same types of topics
| or questions that many others here do, because the complaints
| about DDG are foreign to me.
| SG- wrote:
| with DDG set to default on my browsers, I kept having to
| manually enter google.com just to search 50% of my search
| content. I eventually decided to just go back to Google and I
| don't have that issue now that I've switched to Kagi.
| messe wrote:
| Why not just append !g after the query? IMO, bang patterns
| are probably the most useful feature of DDG to me. Being able
| to search Wikipedia (across multiple languages), wiktionary,
| YouTube, etc. without needing to configure them all manually
| on all my devices is pretty nice.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| All Google alternatives are very insufficient if you're
| searching in a different language than English. Except for
| Kagi.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| "Paying for Kagi today feels a lot like paying for HBO back in
| the cable TV heyday. Part of the deal is that you are paying for
| ad-free service, yes. But you're also paying for noticeably
| higher quality."
|
| This sums up my experience tidily. Kagi is a delight to use.
|
| It doesn't make sense _ex ante_ why one would pay for something
| that 's colloquially free. But then you experience it and it
| feels luxurious. (Before you notice the productivity and
| curiosity boost.)
| snorremd wrote:
| I love that Kagi puts the "monetization" icon right next to
| results so I can avoid navigating to them. This means I'm much
| less likely to click on Medium.com links and other monetized
| blogs and sites. Often times the good content is on some
| personal website where the creator doesn't really care about
| earning money off it.
|
| Another neat feature is the possibility to rank results or
| block them manually so you can lower visibility of certain
| sites. Really help push the scammy sites down.
|
| Compare this to Google Search where the first half page is paid
| results (ads) and the rest of the results are of dubious
| quality. And you don't really have much of a way to influence
| your search results.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _love that Kagi puts the "monetization" icon right next to
| results so I can avoid navigating to them_
|
| One of the things I love about Kagi is it isn't overly
| opinionated. I'm not particularly sensitive to this issue.
| You are. Yet until this comment, I didn't notice that Kagi
| was doing this. It informed you. It didn't get it in my way.
| That's good design.
|
| > _Another neat feature is the possibility to rank results or
| block them manually so you can lower visibility of certain
| sites. Really help push the scammy sites down._
|
| The ad-driven search engines refusing to implement this
| really drives home their conflicts of interest.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| I would be very interested to know if Kagi starts to down
| rank a site for everybody if lots of its users manually
| down rank it.
| Semaphor wrote:
| I don't mind Medium being monetized, but I have the domain
| downranked, because posting on medium is a very strong signal
| that the content is worthless.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Use reader mode on your browser, and you can read most of the
| paywalled sites.
| coldpie wrote:
| Could you give some examples of specific queries (like, tell me
| exactly what to type into the search bar) where you find Kagi
| returns better results than Google or DDG? I tried Kagi a
| couple times and didn't notice a significant difference in
| result quality, so I'd like to see what people find so nice
| about it.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| You can blacklist whole domains (or subdomains) as well as
| upranking or downranking specific sites.
|
| This lets you avoid the seo spam (particularly bad for
| programming sites).
|
| For example. Say I want to know more about python's built in
| sum() functions. A google search for "Python sum function"
| produces results on the first page from:
|
| - w3school
|
| - GeeksforGeeks
|
| - real python
|
| - programiz
|
| - code academy
|
| And only after do I get the official python docs.
|
| On Kagi I have blacklisted all of those garbage sites and the
| official docs at the top result.
| coldpie wrote:
| Thank you. Sounds like the search results are not actually
| much better on Kagi, but the features around search such as
| blocking domains is where you find the value. That would
| explain why I didn't see much of a difference when I tried
| it out without doing any customization.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| I don't agree with the distinction you're trying to make.
| Google also tries to customize your results for you, but
| does not offer you any control (don't know about ddg). I
| think of it as the same thing with Kagi, expect I have
| explicit input into the results.
|
| Some of these changes are subjective. E.g. I have blocked
| all of Pinterest since it just clutters my results, but
| other people explicitly want Pinterest in their results.
| (not I don't know who would want the seo'd programming
| sites, but that's a different matter).
| stenius wrote:
| Here's some stats that kagi publishes on how people are
| using their blocking and a great place to great started
| with it as well.
|
| https://kagi.com/stats?stat=leaderboard
| SaberTail wrote:
| You can search the official python docs on DDG with
| !python. So if you search for "!python sum", it takes you
| right there. They have a lot of other "bangs" that work
| really well, too: https://duckduckgo.com/bangs
| inetknght wrote:
| Normal users don't want to have to remember magic
| incantations to not have to sift through malicious
| "businesses".
| entuno wrote:
| Normal users also don't want to have to go through
| curating their own blacklist of sites to get decent
| results.
| inetknght wrote:
| Sure, but given the shit state that Google is, I argue
| that normal users would rather have to curate their own
| blacklist a few times instead of being subjected to (at
| best) SEO spam or (worse) malicious websites.
|
| That's why I use Kagi.
| ndegruchy wrote:
| You can do that on Kagi, too. You just don't _need_ to.
| einarfd wrote:
| I haven't set up blacklist for my kagi account. Searched
| for "python sum", got a link to the python doc as the first
| result. So imo. you dont need a blacklist.
| dingnuts wrote:
| one I like to use to demonstrate is "how to fix a leaking
| faucet"
|
| Google gives you a full page of ads for plumbers
|
| Kagi gives you instructional videos from This Old House. It's
| night and day.
| gcau wrote:
| I just tried this, and google returned a variety of videos
| (guides for fixing), and various text/website tutorials
| (home depot, reddit etc), I had to scroll to the absolute
| bottom to see an ad for a plumber.
| coldpie wrote:
| I had the same experience. I'm located in Minnesota, USA,
| not currently logged in to Google, and I use an ad
| blocker. First result was a Home Depot home repair
| article that looks genuinely useful. Then relevant
| YouTube videos, Reddit threads, an iFixIt link, a link to
| the Portland government website. I see zero things I
| would explicitly call an "ad" on the first page.
| 28304283409234 wrote:
| To me, it is not the results that are the kicker. It is that
| I no longer have to waste my time filtering out Google
| customers paying for my attention.
|
| Every result in Kagi is there to try to help ME. Not Google.
| Not their customers.
|
| And even though DDG is fine privacy-wise, in this regard they
| are no better than Google.
| coldpie wrote:
| > It is that I no longer have to waste my time filtering
| out Google customers paying for my attention.
|
| Can you explain what this means in more detail? (To be
| clear, I'm not trying to be adversarial, I'm asking for a
| sales pitch :) )
| Zambyte wrote:
| > @dh nats !
|
| This brings me directly to https://hub.docker.com/_/nats/.
| Like it doesn't even show Kagi.
|
| > @hn !
|
| This brings me directly to the front page of HN.
|
| > @gh jj !
|
| This brings me to https://github.com/jj-vcs/jj
|
| > !guixc how do I install nginx?
|
| This brings me to
| https://kagi.com/assistant/071a7584-d0a3-49fe-
| abe1-635223085..., which includes an answer relevant to my
| distro from a generic question.
|
| > !p nginx
|
| Brings me to
| https://packages.guix.gnu.org/search/?query=nginx.
|
| The customization is extremely powerful as you can see. Snaps
| are also often significantly better than bangs, because sites
| often have bad built in search (!dh particularly sucks. !gh
| isn't great either imo).
| bigyabai wrote:
| Something tells me that Gruber has been betrayed by supposedly
| "premium" subscription services in the past.
| dsego wrote:
| The same type of scams now exist for almost anything, I know you
| have to be careful when buying digital vignettes for motorways
| across europe. There are official websites and then there are
| these official looking 3rd party websites that try to trick you
| into paying several times more for the same thing. Of course, the
| scummy ones spend more on SEO and ads to get to the top.
| pookieinc wrote:
| For those of us who have moved the vast majority of our Google
| searches to ChatGPT / only use Google periodically for one-off
| questions, is there still a reason to switch to Kagi?
| evertedsphere wrote:
| how do you tolerate the sheer latency of running the "vast
| majority" of your web searches through an llm
| esseph wrote:
| How many searches previously to find the right question to
| ask x search time = total_search_time
|
| # of searches is lower, total-search_time drops
| criddell wrote:
| For me ChatGPT is great when I don't really know what I
| don't know. I still end up having to do a google search
| after to verify that the AI result isn't insane. So for me
| ChatGPT often is just adding an extra step.
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| The LLM can read through the results quicker than you can and
| provide the information you were looking for.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Well, it provides something at any rate. Whether or not
| it's the information you were looking for is very much a
| matter of luck.
| senko wrote:
| I use Kagi as a search engine and Perplexity and Kagi assistant
| as a research tool. I view those two as different use cases.
|
| I also trust @freediver more than Sam Altman :)
| ghc wrote:
| What kind of search does Kagi excel at compared to
| Perplexity? I've been using Perplexity as a google
| replacement for about a year now, so I haven't tried Kagi,
| but seeing several people mention they use both has piqued my
| interest.
| senko wrote:
| To me, personally, it's about the use case: searching for a
| page on the internet (Kagi) or researching a particular
| question or topic (Perplexity).
|
| If I know what info I want (say, that particular blog post
| that mentioned topic XYZ, or the web page for a car
| dealership, or docs for something where the site search is
| worse than a web search), using Kagi is quicker and easier.
|
| Edit to add: I just noticed I always use Kagi to search
| YouTube instead of YTs search directly (!yt <whatever>). I
| do the same for Wikipedia, Yahoo Finance, GoodReads, Roger
| Ebert movie review site, and probably a few other sites I
| can't recall right now. And I also have some sites boosted
| and some others blocked, but I haven't been tweaking that
| for a long time now...
|
| If I'm interested in a topic but don't know exactly what or
| where, or want a longer explanation aggregated over
| multiple sources, then I use Perplexity. I usually fire off
| my question, let it work in the background, and come back a
| bit later.
|
| That's just my use case, I don't presume that everyone else
| behaves the same. Also I just recently got access to Kagi's
| assistant on my plan, which may cannibalize my Perplexity
| use (we'll see).
| ghc wrote:
| Thanks for taking the time to explain; what you say makes
| a lot of sense. I'm definitely going to give Kagi a try.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| If you believe ChatGPT is good for such usage, no. But
| personally I think it sucks at that and have no idea how anyone
| can stand it.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Just try it, it's free to try.
| Ezhik wrote:
| Kagi is so nice. Amazing that it's the first search engine I've
| seen that lets me do something as obvious as customizing ranking
| for certain websites. And, of course, the ability to block
| websites from search results entirely.
|
| It even passes my personal search test - it shows reasonable
| results and not pages and pages of junkware when I search for
| "avi to mp4".
|
| I think my only annoyance with it is that it shows me shopping
| websites for irrelevant countries when in "International" search
| mode - but that's honestly something I'm not sure should be
| fixed, especially given how it's _impossible_ to get Google to
| show English results in a non-English-speaking country.
| demaga wrote:
| I live in a non-English-speaking country, and Google works fine
| for searches in English. I would say it only works poorly for
| single-word searches.
|
| Of course, I have my system and browser language set to
| English, so maybe that's why.
| stevekemp wrote:
| I have everything possible set to English, yet when searching
| for street-names or other random things I get shown Finnish
| about fifty percent of the time.
|
| A "change to English" popup sometimes appears with the
| results, and it sometimes works. Other times it does nothing.
|
| Searching in English for things which feel like they should
| be okay (e.g. a recent search was "Tag (2018)" to lookup
| details of the film) sometimes results in Finnish too.
| mubou wrote:
| > how it's impossible to get Google to show English results in
| a non-English-speaking country
|
| It's ridiculous because there's even a language option in the
| search settings, but it _does nothing_. I had to change my
| country to United States just to get it to stop giving me non-
| English technical documentation and wiki articles. But that
| means in order to get local results for stores etc I have to
| use Bing /DDG instead.
|
| Does Kagi solve this problem somehow? Like, can I make it give
| me non-English results for local things and English results for
| everything else?
| nicbou wrote:
| I'm travelling, and it's weird to get results in a different
| language with every border I cross. Just because I'm in Spain
| does not mean that I suddenly speak Spanish. My browser and
| my Google account already transmit my language preferences!
| Ezhik wrote:
| The best incantation I've got to force English Google results
| is https://www.google.com/search?q=hedgehog&lr=lang_en&hl=en&
| ud...
|
| For Kagi, I've got it set to give me international results,
| so technical documentation is in English, but I have to
| manually change the region to my country for local results -
| thankfully that's just a dropdown on the same page that
| remembers your recent country choices.
| stevekemp wrote:
| Sadly your incantation fails for me - I've been fighting
| this issue for years.
|
| If I copy and paste your search-link but change the word
| from "hedgehog" to aiti I get back a page of Finnish
| results.
|
| This drives me mad when I'm searching for a Finnish street-
| name, or store-brand. My account is setup in English, my
| browser accept-language headers are English and yet it will
| constantly decide to switch to Finnish for me. (Except for
| google maps which will universally show street-names in
| Swedish. Scream.)
|
| Sometimes I get a "switch to English" link, sometimes I do
| not. Half the time that takes me to a settings page with a
| progress of "Saving" which does nothing, and half the time
| it redirects me back to English search results.
|
| Google's approach to language has literally no rhyme or
| reason, and breaks on a daily basis for me. But I guess it
| is what it is, and I continue to put up with it for the
| times I use it.
| jq-r wrote:
| You can use https://google.com/ncr which doesn't redirect
| to a country.
| areyourllySorry wrote:
| try searching for an english word in incognito, there should
| be a yellow box on the right that lets you change to english.
| dunno about logged in searches
| Thimothy wrote:
| In Kagi you can search with a specific country selected or
| the default "international".
|
| I find it a superior alternative to Googles "wherever you
| are", but I do a lot of multilingual searches. For example,
| when I'm searching for french recipes, I don't want crappy
| American SEO optimized recipe agregators. Selecting the
| country I live in brings up local laws instead of stuff from
| other (bigger) countries where the same language is spoken.
| International works very well for code and general queries.
| mhitza wrote:
| One thing Google does which I like is that I don't have to
| fiddle with region dropdowns. I just drop in a keyword in
| my local language and it knows to switch the results
| sources.
|
| Kagi should be able to do that nicely, though I'm not gonna
| suggest anything on their feedback forum, that's already
| backlogged to the brim.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| that sounds good until you want to buy that uniquely
| named ingredient in the usa and it will only give results
| elsewhere and you have little control
| kristofferR wrote:
| Kagi has the opposite problem though, there's no way to
| search for results only in a specific language.
|
| 99% of the time I like that English results are included in
| country specific searches (I keep "Norway" as default) so I
| don't have to switch back and forth all the time, but when
| I only want Norwegian results I am forced to switch back to
| Google.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| duck duck go have a drop down where you select any county
| anywhere you are.
|
| want to search in spain while in the UK? so easy. all other
| searches are completely broken without this.
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| > Amazing that it's the first search engine I've seen that lets
| me do something as obvious as customizing ranking for certain
| websites. And, of course, the ability to block websites from
| search results entirely.
|
| Brave goggles also allow you to customize the rankings to your
| preference. You can boost sites to varying levels (1-10 I
| believe), downrank them, or discard (block) them entirely.
| drabbiticus wrote:
| Just curious if you have a screenshot or a list of the top n
| results for "avi to mp4" when using Kagi so that there is a bit
| of a data point for comparison captured in thread?
| rafram wrote:
| On a search for "avi to mp4":
|
| - Google shows CloudConvert, then some helpful Reddit threads,
| then Ask Ubuntu, then some spammy SEO-optimized converter
| websites.
|
| - Kagi shows CloudConvert, then pages and pages of spammy SEO-
| optimized converter websites.
|
| Google clearly wins there.
| prophesi wrote:
| Opposite here, but I also don't have a personalized Google
| search experience, and an exhaustive list of sites in Kagi
| that I raise/lower/block from the results.
| 28304283409234 wrote:
| Happy paying customer of Kagi here. because to me intention
| counts.
|
| Kagi has the explicit intention to serve me their best
| results.
|
| Google has the explicit intention to get me to click on their
| customers results.
|
| Happy to pay kagi.
| rafram wrote:
| Use an ad blocker.
| infinitifall wrote:
| Now Google has no intention to serve you
| rafram wrote:
| I've never had any issue using any Google service with an
| ad blocker. They make plenty off of me via YouTube
| Premium and Google Flights commissions - both services
| that I think are valuable, and one that I actually gladly
| pay for.
| tim333 wrote:
| I think Google has the intention to get you to click on
| their ads. Which they can achieve by providing ok search
| results.
| mvieira38 wrote:
| Did the same here on my Android phone.
|
| Google:First result, occupying half my screen, was a
| sponsored Google Play junk app, then CloudConvert,
| FreeConvert, Convertio, Adobe Express, Restream (this one
| seems like garbage), then a second Play widget and then SEO
| slop.
|
| Kagi: FreeConvert, CloudConvert, a youtube tutorial, a Quick
| Peek widget with unhelpful topics, Restream, Adobe Express,
| SEO slop at the end.
|
| Not that much better by Kagi, but it's pretty good not having
| any ads. I'm curious why you'd think leading you to Reddit
| when you searched for a converter is a desirable result,
| though, and I think you got that because you search for
| "[term] reddit" so much it defaulted to it via algorithm
| rafram wrote:
| It's not just me getting Reddit discussion results - Google
| has an exclusive deal with Reddit to list it in search
| results [1], and it tends to be ranked highly now for more
| subjective/recommendation-based queries. (And I did this
| test after clicking the "Try without personalization" link
| in the Google footer.)
|
| I didn't list the ads in the Google results because I
| didn't see them. There's no reason not to be using an ad
| blocker, and unlike Kagi, it's free.
|
| [1]: https://www.404media.co/google-is-the-only-search-
| engine-tha...
| mvieira38 wrote:
| So you're saying it's good to have your results
| influenced by megacorporation exclusivity deals? I didn't
| use an adblocker because I was using the app, and having
| to rely on adblockers is cheating for Google, the
| services should be judged as is. Google isn't above
| blocking you from their services for using adblockers,
| too, as we can see from Youtube
| rafram wrote:
| Did I say that?
| tombert wrote:
| I hadn't heard of that deal. How is that not blatantly
| anti-competitive?
| dhc02 wrote:
| The best part about Kagi is that if the default results
| don't seem helpful, one click restricts results to only
| discussions and forums, which is usually exactly what I
| want to do next.
| rafram wrote:
| Google supports that too. After searching, click "Forums"
| in the top bar.
| amelius wrote:
| Avi to mp4 is best done with an ffmpeg command written by an
| llm. But OK, I get that that was not the point.
| rafram wrote:
| If you already have ffmpeg, you shouldn't need an LLM to
| write `ffmpeg -i video.avi video.mp4`.
| amelius wrote:
| The llm will tell you there are lots of interesting
| options.
| nimih wrote:
| As will the manual of ffmpeg itself, for what it's worth.
| lukan wrote:
| Yes, but a llm (or good old stackoverflow) are faster for
| most people.
| throwaway314155 wrote:
| If there is perhaps just _one_ thing that we can all
| admit that LLM's are good at, it should be bash one-
| liners for common tasks.
|
| Which is to say, I highly recommend using an LLM for
| exploring commands to run in a terminal. Once past the
| learning curve, it is a good way to avoid dozens to
| hundreds of cryptic short-options (just ask for only long
| options).
| emacdona wrote:
| > customizing ranking for certain websites [...] the ability to
| block websites from search results entirely.
|
| These were the killer features for me and why I'm happy to
| continue paying for Kagi.
|
| That being said, I've (anecdotally, at least) noticed the
| quality of their search results declining (still better than
| Google).
|
| I search for a lot of error messages (for example, errors that
| I encounter while compiling Java code) -- with very unique
| strings -- only to have the entire first page of results not
| contain these strings. Even if I quote them. I really want the
| ability to say "The page MUST HAVE THESE STRINGS". Google used
| to have "allintext:" -- but even that doesn't guarantee a page
| will contain a certain string anymore.
|
| Now, when I'm trying to get more insight on an error message,
| I'll use AI first. And while I get much better results that
| way, I find it incredibly frustrating because search engines
| USED TO BE JUST FINE for this use case. Now they no longer are.
| camillomiller wrote:
| Try not living in the US/UK and looking for results in languages
| different than English. The sad, sad, sad reality is that Google
| is still best at these type of searches. That comes, alas, with a
| ton of useless and often half-scammy sponsored links on top of
| any SERP, plus now also some awful AI-overview results that are
| even worse than English (but there's the cheat code for that, at
| least).
|
| So the only doable thing here is Google + Ublock + Anti-AI Konami
| Code.
|
| Possibly the best ever depiction of Enshittification in practice.
| Ezhik wrote:
| There's also uBlacklist for blocking domains from search
| engines, a miracle extension.
| senko wrote:
| Hello from Croatia. While most of my searches are in English, I
| just did a few searches for local topics, in Croatian, and find
| the results comparable.
|
| I do assume Google is faster to index and has a larger index,
| so finding very new, or obscure, pages in non-english languages
| will probably be worse in Kagi. For those niche cases I have !g
| sph wrote:
| I switched back to Google as I moved back to Italy. I lasted a
| week before resubscribing to Kagi, the AI spam and terrible
| results made me hate every single interaction I had with the
| site.
|
| Do you know the feeling when you're using an alternative search
| engine that what you're looking for is missing, and to be 100%
| sure you have to compare with Google? I have the opposite
| problem now: whenever I use Google, I feel nothing relevant is
| being surfaced and I have to run back to Kagi.
|
| I literally have learned to associate the Google search logo
| with "bad quality", which is fcuking tragic for a company that
| used to be known for their innovative search engine.
| d12bb wrote:
| German here. My searches are probably like 50:50
| German:English. I don't notice any difference in quality with
| Kagi's results between the two languages, and both are well
| ahead of Google.
| piva00 wrote:
| I use Kagi for all my Swedish searches, it works better than
| Google every time I compare.
| glenjamin wrote:
| I find it a little surprising that the famous apple blogger
| neglects to mention that Apple makes it hard to use a search
| engine like Kagi on iOS!
| sshine wrote:
| How so?
|
| I have Kagi set as the default search engine in the Orion
| browser.
|
| The main problem I experience on iOS is that apps that open
| websites will pick Safari, and not my default browser. I'm sure
| they have some legitimate excuse, like "the app developer made
| that choice", or "that other browser doesn't support the right
| API" or whatever bullshit that makes the default browser not
| the default.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Apple makes it hard to use a search engine like Kagi on iOS_
|
| Unobvious. Not hard. To the chasm that is getting someone to
| pay for search, getting them to install an app and follow
| tedious but simple configuration instructions is a gap in the
| sidewalk.
| sph wrote:
| I have been a software engineer for almost two decades and
| it's taken me three tries at reading and rereading the
| instruction on how to set Kagi as default search on iOS,
| because I missed the fact that I had to allow permission to
| use the extension WHILE browsing google.com for it to work,
| as it has to intercept the query to rewrite the URL.
|
| When all it should've been is a "custom search engine" option
| like Firefox does.
|
| Calling it "unobvious" is PR newspeak for jumping through the
| hoops to set up a Rube Goldberg machine to do a basic search.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _I missed the fact that I had to allow permission to use
| the extension WHILE browsing google.com for it to work_
|
| There was a period of time when they had two apps, and I
| agree the old one was stupidly complicated. The new one,
| Kagi for Search, doesn't require this.
|
| Like, should Apple have an open API for routing searches?
| Maybe. Would that get abused? Probably. Do I think Kagi
| should be on Apple's list? Yes. Does prioritising a
| 50,000-user engine into iOS's defaults create other issues?
| Yes as well.
| sph wrote:
| I installed Kagi for Search not even a week ago, so I
| guess the new app is just too advanced for someone like
| me.
| nroach wrote:
| I've also found that the extension configuration isn't very
| durable. I wound up having to re-do the arcane setup
| process semi-annually on each device or my searches would
| 403. Eventually just gave up. Brave search seems to work
| just as well.
| KoolKat23 wrote:
| How Apple haven't already lost a massive anti-trust case is
| beyond me.
| nkurz wrote:
| I think there might be more to it. While it might just be me,
| I think Kagi could use some improvement here. I've been using
| Kagi with Safari on Mac for about a year, and never got the
| search extension to work consistently. It would sometimes
| give me Google, and sometimes Kagi. And sometimes it would
| give me one site then switch to the other after a several
| second delay.
|
| Eventually I gave up and uninstalled their extension. I
| switched to using StopTheMadness to do the redirects instead,
| and am having much better luck. I did switch from redirecting
| Google to redirecting Ecosia at the same time, and this might
| be the difference, and while I'd fully agree that Safari
| doesn't make it easy, but I think the base problem is that
| their browser extension just doesn't work that well.
|
| (If you are familiar with both, you will understand that
| switching _to_ StopTheMadness for a better interface is
| pretty high in irony!)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Hmm, fair enough. Do you think there is something Kagi
| could do to make this easier?
| nkurz wrote:
| I don't know the details well enough to pinpoint the
| problem, but the fact that StopTheMadness is able to
| redirect consistently and the Kagi extension wasn't makes
| me think there is something they could fix to make it
| work better.
| glenjamin wrote:
| No, it's "hard", because it requires an extension to monitor
| all requests to a different search enging and hijack those to
| perform a redirect.
|
| This is a clever workaround by Kagi, but a glaring hole in
| the Safari extension API surface area.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| If I were setting up Kagi just for my self that's probably
| true. But the thing preventing me from paying for Kagi is I'd
| want it for my household. Setting it up and supporting it on
| all the devices was enough for me to take a pass.
| troupo wrote:
| In comments on Mastodon he also finds a way to twist this into
| an anti-EU rant:
| https://mastodon.social/@gruber/114418346006131728
| badgersnake wrote:
| Yeah, this is tedious.
| criddell wrote:
| It's not surprising. This is an article about Kagi. I wouldn't
| be surprised if he had something about iOS' search engine
| management in an early draft and then edited that part out
| because it's off-topic.
| croisillon wrote:
| I find it a little surprising that the blog famously censored
| by HN is still able to land on the first page of HN
| baggachipz wrote:
| The countdown has begun. Get your comments in now!
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| I see Gruber on here fairly frequently. Enough to say that
| articles from his blog are not a rarity
| sylens wrote:
| Curious, I just tried it for the first time. Install Kagi
| Extension for Safari from the App Store, open up Safari, go to
| Manage Extensions, turn it on. Then tap it in the extensions
| menu and accept permissions. Then it works.
|
| Not one click but by no means a byzantine process
| watusername wrote:
| This extension is a big ugly hack: It redirects result pages
| of built-in search pages to Kagi, sometimes _after_ the
| original page has fully loaded. This doesn't occur on my M4
| MacBook Pro, but happens all the time on my much slower
| 12-inch MacBook [0].
|
| If this doesn't scare you already, I'll rephrase: Your
| queries may be sent to the built-in search engines even if
| you think you're only using Kagi! It does not actually
| replace the need for real custom search engine support in
| Safari. The official Kagi docs coyly acknowledge this [1]:
|
| > For a better experience, we recommend selecting a single
| search engine to redirect (DuckDuckGo or Ecosia are
| recommended options as they have better privacy policies than
| other alternatives).
|
| [0]: It's an amazingly portable device made ahead of its time
| - Apple really should revive this form factor and stick an M1
| chip in it. [1]: https://help.kagi.com/kagi/getting-
| started/setting-default.h...
| Terretta wrote:
| Yes, use ecosia.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| The extension is a big ugly hack, but you don't have to use
| it. You can simply set kagi.com as your start page and/or
| your new tab page.
| billbrown wrote:
| Orion (made by Kagi) is a WebKit-based browser that
| eliminates the need for an extension.
| roflmaostc wrote:
| I recently switched to the Kagi ultimate plan.
|
| Since I almost considered getting a paid AI service, with Kagi I
| get the freedom to choose different models + I get a nice
| interface for search, translate, ... With Kagi the AI service
| also does not know who I am.
|
| I'm quite happy so far, also the Android app works fine. 95% of
| the time I don't open a browser but instead the app to answer my
| questions.
|
| The privacy feature somehow did not work in my firefox browser
| yet.
| sitkack wrote:
| That reminds me, I need to cancel Phind, they cost optimized it
| and gets stuck where it refuses to search and argues with me,
| doubling down on its confabulations.
| Zealotux wrote:
| I tried not so long ago, it didn't stick, I still find results
| are too sanitised and got better results with DDG or Yandex. Now
| that Google is pushed this own flavor of AI slop I will do a new
| round of testing of the alternatives.
| axegon_ wrote:
| No, thanks, I'll stick to qwant:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/1gvcqua/psa_the_ka...
| flymaipie wrote:
| Is there any sensible explanation why Kagi does funding Yandex?
| It seems weird to me.
| troupo wrote:
| They pay for search results to search providers because Kagi
| doesn't have an index of their own.
|
| In the link above they say they added Yandex Image search as
| a provider.
| kenanfyi wrote:
| They use their image search results, and according to CEO it
| sums up to 2% of their costs. I saw an explanation post in
| their forum about this issue, but can't find it right now.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Is there any sensible explanation why Kagi does funding
| Yandex?_
|
| They want access to Yandex's index. Given the quality of
| Kagi's results, I trust them with that call. Despite the
| Ukraine war being of deep personal interest to me.
| xigoi wrote:
| It's not funding, it's paying for a service.
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| Funding does not imply a lack of receiving something in
| return, only a flow of money. It can be both
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Yandex isn't on any sanctions list as far as I know, so Kagi
| is free to do business with Yandex. Yandex did need to
| reorganize (as their Dutch tax avoidance parent company was
| obviously causing them issues) but looking at
| https://ir.yandex/press-releases?year=2024&id=05-02-2024 it
| seems like all of Yandex has been sold to a generic Russian
| investment fund.
|
| Legally, Kagi can buy access to Yandex' API. Whether they
| should is a matter of opinion. It's the main reason I haven't
| tried Kagi yet, and probably never will, as the owners don't
| seem to have a problem with any of it.
| omgitspavel wrote:
| Legally they can. But we all know that Yandex had always
| had very strong ties with the Russian government. I used to
| work for Yandex for more than 6 years in early 2010s and
| even then there were signs of the state trying to influence
| it through censoring Yandex.News and various other means.
| And these days you have to be very naive to assume that it
| is not controlled by the state and people close to it.
| d12bb wrote:
| When I tried Qwant a few weeks ago, its search results were
| even worse than Google. So, Kagi it still is.
| jwe wrote:
| Same for me. I don't understand why they are not able to
| cleanly separate themselves from Yandex. Their explanations
| don't help me understand it but only serve as "we hear you and
| consciously decide to still fund a Russian company".
|
| If anybody reading this is willing to disabuse me of this I'll
| try to be open for a different perspective.
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| It's the same as when Russians are asked about the invasion,
| "I'm not political."
| cuu508 wrote:
| It's worse. Random Russians interviewed on a Moscow street
| would risk going to jail if they spoke their mind.
|
| Kagi on the other hand is "apolitical" because it is good
| for business.
| philwelch wrote:
| Did you type this comment on a device made in China?
| jwe wrote:
| After a quick internet search apparently Google produces
| Pixel phones mainly in Taiwan with additional processes
| happening in China and India. What is the point you are
| trying to make?
| lelanthran wrote:
| I think brave search deserves a mention; I've been using it now
| for years and have better results than with google.
|
| I believe kagi is a lot better than brave search, but because I
| am having good results with brave[1] I am unlikely to pull out my
| credit card.
|
| [1] Every search I do also has an LLM response at the top, which
| is often just enough for me to not even look at the results.
| Where brave fails is in the image and video search.
| mbix77 wrote:
| Their way of not condemning the invasion of Ukraine, and sticking
| with support for Yandex, is pretty worrisome, and reminds me of
| the attitude of the Kaspersky sales reps. You need to ask
| yourself why.
| eloisius wrote:
| > The results were all about obtaining an ETA and I picked a link
| that looked like the official UK government site. It was not; the
| official site was lower, below an AI summary
|
| This is both insane and common. Last year I was in Athens with a
| friend. The line to buy tickets at the acropolis was huge but
| staff were telling everyone if you buy it online you don't have
| to wait at the kiosk. My friend googled "acropolis tickets" and
| bought a ticket from what looked like the official site. Turns
| out they were not official. They priced the tickets such that
| you'd think they were the real Thing too. The real ticket is like
| $20 for only the acropolis, $35 for the entire site. She got the
| $35 one, and only later found out that this scam reseller was
| selling the limited ticket at the full ticket price.
| frank20022 wrote:
| For those who tried both: Kagi or Perplexity?
|
| I'm considering them both, buy I'll only pay for one...
| bananapub wrote:
| kagi has a free trial (100 searches) so you can just answer
| this very personal question for yourself.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Based on this alone, Kagi.
|
| <https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/24/perplexity-ceo-says-its-
| br...>
| schrectacular wrote:
| I just had a free month on them. It was great but for me the
| plans are weird. 300 searches a month is _probably_ enough but
| the fact that I'm on a countdown makes me super cagey with my
| searches. And I want to want to use the service if that makes
| sense. I'm not opposed to paying (I pay for email) and I know
| they share the reasons for the pricing, but my email account is
| something like $3 a month.
|
| I guess this is a long winded way of saying I'm cheap? I'm close
| to the fence but thus far have stayed on the far side mostly due
| to price. At $5 a month unlimited I'd be in for sure and probably
| usually not hit the 300 number. The AI included level is
| intriguing though.
| jetbalsa wrote:
| I guess I'm a power user, I'm at > Total searches this period
| 1,216 > Assistant interactions this period 92
|
| I feel the 25$ is worth it for a product that I use this much
| and along with knowing the costs of trying to keep all this
| stuff alive at the smaller scale can be hard. until they get
| much larger I don't expect the prices to go down.
| SietrixDev wrote:
| I don't think I'm a power user and I'm constantly over 1000
| searches / month. Just a few days ago I upgraded my plan to
| the highest tier to play with the better models and in a few
| days it's gonna renew for a year at this tier.
|
| If I'm gonna use the AI assistant with web access I'd assume
| my searches are gonna go up even more.
| schrectacular wrote:
| Strangely (or maybe not based on how pricing economics work)
| this is the most appealing tier.
|
| Thanks for the reply, it is helpful .
| carlosjobim wrote:
| What is the connection between your e-mail account and a search
| engine? Should the price of a glass of juice in a bar be
| equivalent to the price of gas for a car?
|
| > I guess this is a long winded way of saying I'm cheap?
|
| I think it is. If something isn't worth even $10 per month to
| me, then I would never think about that thing again.
| schrectacular wrote:
| Fair point. The analogy is confusing but probably because it
| involves hydrocarbon subsidies... I mean how is the gas
| cheaper?! It makes no sense.
|
| I'm sure my playful sarcasm above doesn't come through well,
| but thanks for the reply it is helpful.
| daitangio wrote:
| I have used yahoo search for two months on my mobile phone: it
| worked and it is still active. I have a similar experience using
| Bing.
|
| Google is stronger but not so much as it was in 2000 (when the
| other search engines were...terrible).
|
| Today the Search engine is nothing without 'support site' like:
|
| - StackOverflow - Reddit - Wikipedia
|
| and news.ycombinator.com :) of course
| bananapub wrote:
| another vote for Kagi - it's just very pleasant to use. It's
| fast, the results are great, it's quite cheap for a tech-
| employed-Westerner, and it's just really quite nice to have such
| a simple business relationship for this. I pay them some small
| amount of money to me and in return they simply buy indexes of
| the web and let me search it. There's no tension about them
| wanting me to use it more to see more ads and the incentive is
| for them to implement features that I, the person who gives them
| money wants, and if they turn to shit I simply stop paying them
| and use someone else.
|
| Some nice features that may not be obvious:
|
| - you can shitcan entire sites, e.g. everything to do with
| Pinboard or Facebook - you can uprank sites in the results that
| tend to be useful, e.g. MDN - you can add shortcuts to the search
| box - it has "lenses" which limit the search results in slightly
| abstract ways, e.g. "small web" or "academic"
|
| They also did a bunch of work so you can do searches from
| incognito windows, and they can verify your subscription without
| knowing specifically you who are.
|
| Also, as some more anecdata, I can't tell if Google has got worse
| or Kagi better, but a year ago I'd find my useful using Google a
| few times a month for something niche (usually source code-
| related), but over the last few months Google hasn't been any
| better even for that, so I've basically stopped even that minimal
| use.
|
| Anyway, it's very good, but in that way that just makes me a bit
| happier in life for using it, rather than being acutely exciting.
| senko wrote:
| Submission seems to be buried but not showing flagged/dead.
|
| Currently at 65 points, 63 comments, 2 hours old, popular domain,
| no flamewar or politics. Yet nowhere to be found in the first few
| pages.
|
| Weird that it got buried, maybe the topic is on the front page
| too often?
| senko wrote:
| Seems to be unburied!
| greazy wrote:
| I have at least one kagi 3 month trial link. If anyone wants it,
| reply below :)
| grussladd wrote:
| I would love to try it out, if the link is still available :)
| timothevs wrote:
| That would be very kind, if you still have it available. I have
| been on the fence - skeptical as is my nature, but I wonder if
| I am in the wrong here :)
| ibrahimsow1 wrote:
| Yes please
| SG- wrote:
| Curious, but how do you get 3 month trial invites?
| nexo-v1 wrote:
| I switched to DuckDuckGo recently too. It's good enough for most
| things, but for deeper or niche info, I still bounce back to
| Google (with uBlock).
|
| Haven't tried Kagi yet -- not sure the difference is big enough
| to pay for.
|
| Honestly, I'm still stuck using some Google stuff anyway, like
| Maps. I'd like to de-Google a bit more, but in practice it's
| hard.
| wtmt wrote:
| I've heard good things about Kagi a lot on HN. I already pay for
| some services (like email [1], web hosting, etc.) instead of
| using free/ad supported services.
|
| But I find Kagi to be quite expensive for multiple people (in a
| family setting) who are not in the first world and/or cannot
| dedicate such a budget just for search. If and when Kagi becomes
| larger and is able to reduce its costs and prices, I'll consider
| it.
|
| I find DuckDuckGo with Google as a fall back kinda adequate. With
| duck.ai from DuckDuckGo providing different mini LLMs for some
| kinds of queries, it gets even better.
|
| [1]: For additional context, I consider something like Fastmail
| to be expensive in a family setting with multiple people needing
| their own mailboxes.
| devinprater wrote:
| Kagi is pretty good. Accessibility in the assistant mode could be
| cleaned up a little, but it's getting better. I know there's not
| many people working on Kagi though, but I pay them so I'll give
| them time.
| dickiedyce wrote:
| I jumped to Kagi early on. I was on a friend's machine the other
| day, and without thinking, ran a default search ... in Google,
| and wow. Just, wow.
|
| What an appalling waste of electrons. First, non-advert
| (labelled, and non-labelled) on page 3.
| scroot wrote:
| I had the same experience the other day. Had to slum it on some
| other machine with Google. Borderline unusable
| coldpie wrote:
| Could either of you provide some specific search terms (like,
| tell me exactly what to type into the search box) that
| provides better results on Kagi than on Google?
| decimalenough wrote:
| From the article: "Canada ETA"
| stranded22 wrote:
| I pay for family plan. It is a little steep to pay $20/month but
| does mean I feel much better about my 12 year old using a search
| engine unsupervised (I use controld for blocking/monitoring, have
| windows 11 locked down as well as iOS locked down too).
| nsteel wrote:
| I'd not heard of controld before. I was going to ask what's the
| benefit over pihole but I think they've got it covered at
| https://controld.com/blog/controld-vs-pihole/
|
| > Works Everywhere - Control D can be used on any internet-
| connected device, including mobile phones, without any
| installed software. To do the same with Pi-hole, you would have
| to set up a VPN which is a massive overkill for something as
| simple as DNS.
| whalesalad wrote:
| I have been using it for a few years now and can't live without
| it. They really nailed it.
| mhb wrote:
| I know I can use !gm, but is there a way to just make Google Maps
| the default map provider?
| noname120 wrote:
| I'm not entirely what you mean with "default map provider" but
| depending on what you need this may work for you:
| https://kagi.com/settings?p=redirects
|
| Edit: Ah I suppose that you meant the "Inline Maps".
| Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a way to change the
| provider, only to enable/disable the feature:
| https://kagi.com/settings?p=more_search
| tempest_ wrote:
| Very likely due to the cost of the maps api.
| mhb wrote:
| When I search for a city, along with the list of results,
| there is a map on the right. When I click on it, it doesn't
| go to Google Maps.
| neogodless wrote:
| About a year ago, I tried the free 300 search trial. I liked it,
| but wasn't ready to commit to the expense.
|
| This year, they offered me a free 30 day unlimited trial, so I'm
| about 10 days into that. I've only used 128 searches so far.
|
| What I seem to find is that I use it, get to what I'm looking
| for, and move on. So it's not really on my mind. But it's subtly
| refreshing to spend less time _fighting_ search to get what I
| want.
|
| But I have _not_ objectively done comparisons to try to figure
| out if it 's better or not. It does just seem to work for search,
| and I use it and move on.
|
| I don't like the 300 search limit, because it scratches my brain
| - "do I need to search for this? can I find it some other way?
| should I just use duckduckgo for this search?" But I also don't
| want to spend $120/year, because I'm largely allergic to
| subscriptions. Still, if I can spend $360/year on
| Disney/Hulu/Max, I should be able to upgrade my search
| experience.
| jrmg wrote:
| Watch out - I got the email offering a new 30 day free trial,
| and at the end of the month they did nothing to inform me and
| started charging the credit card they apparently still had on
| file from when I subscribed for a month or two a few years ago.
|
| I guess with other companies I would've expected something like
| that and monitored the time more closely, but with Kagi I
| expected better - especially since the email offering the new
| free trial promised "A month on us", and said "Click here to
| activate your trial, _no strings attached_ ".
| neogodless wrote:
| I will keep an eye on it, but I am 99.9% sure I've never paid
| them anything or given them any payment information! (I don't
| trust my brain as much as I did when I was younger, so
| perhaps I'm forgetting something. But I don't think so!)
| packetlost wrote:
| That's weird because Kagi is one of the few subscriptions
| that gives me an email heads up days before they charge me
| during the normal monthly cycle.
| kristofferR wrote:
| I'm not sure if it's a Norwegian law or an EU law, but
| companies here are forced to regularly send reminders that
| you are subscribed to them, I've gotten them from all the
| major streaming services I've subscribed to.
| amelius wrote:
| Huh, Norway is not in the EU.
| joseda-hg wrote:
| They are part of the European Economic Area, which means
| they belong to the EU market and their regulations
| (without voting rights), but they get to keep controlling
| their fisheries
|
| So, in this context, they might as well be
| packetlost wrote:
| We lack such strong consumer protection laws in the US,
| so I'm pleasantly surprised when something so basic like
| this happens.
| Terretta wrote:
| On the contrary, they are the rare SaaS that proactively
| _avoids_ charging you any period you don 't use it.
| deng wrote:
| Interesting, because I brought this exact thing up last time
| Kagi was mentioned here, and the founder and billing engineer
| assured me that it does NOT convert to a subscription:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43308930
| seth_at_kagi wrote:
| Hey,
|
| As I mentioned in my previous comment, it does not convert
| IF you do not have a payment method set. In this instance
| they already had one set which Stripe takes as 'this user
| wants to renew' and instead decides to not cancel it.
|
| I did mention a workaround we could do, and that's
| something that we will ensure gets done asap.
| nottorp wrote:
| > In this instance they already had one set which Stripe
| takes as 'this user wants to renew' and instead decides
| to not cancel it.
|
| Is this even legal? Ok, maybe in the US...
| seth_at_kagi wrote:
| Hey, Engineer from Kagi here.
|
| This is not something we intentionally do here, and is a
| feature of Stripe to automatically renew at the end of a
| trial if there is a payment method present. It should have
| also sent you an email about 7 days before it was going to
| renew.
|
| With that said, I do understand how this may be unexpected. I
| will look into adding a workaround for this auto-renewal so
| that we can prevent that in the future for other users.
| Either way, if you contact support@kagi.com we can give you a
| full refund.
| realo wrote:
| That comment from an actual human being, sir, more than
| anything else, would be by itself a reason for me to switch
| to Kagi everywhere.
|
| Fortunately I already switched to Kagi everywhere...
| bmacho wrote:
| Huh? They are scamming someone,
|
| > I do understand how this may be unexpected.
|
| is the answer, they claim that it is a bug at their
| partner, and they offer opt-in (not automatic) refund.
| That's straight up illegal. Also controversial, like, if
| it's a bug, why isn't the refund automatic in the first
| place.
|
| How does this make you want to be their user?
| freedomben wrote:
| Have you ever written software? Especially to manage
| payments? This is a very plausible bug around a corner
| case. Maybe they're secretly twirling their evil
| mustaches figuring out how to scam their previous
| customers that they're also trying to win back, or maybe
| sometimes bugs happen.
| bmacho wrote:
| Having bugs is okay.
|
| That particular reply however is gross and controversial
| on so many levels.
|
| If you have a bug at a partner, you don't claim that it
| is intended and "I do understand how this may be
| unexpected". If it affects multiple users, you don't do
| opt-in refunds (which is again, illegal, and is a scam if
| intentional).
|
| > Maybe they're secretly twirling their evil mustaches
| figuring out how to scam their previous customers
|
| They've just admitted it?
| bloppe wrote:
| Dude what's your angle here. Scammers don't offer full
| refunds.
| FrinkleFrankle wrote:
| Mate. This guy is a software engineer and taking time out
| of his day to help a client on a forum and explaining why
| this might happen.. And is also taking the user input
| back to his employer to hopefully find a way to improve
| the user experience.
|
| It's also not a scam. If you sign up for a trial that
| tells you you'll be charged at the end and don't bother
| to notify yourself.. That's 100% legal, 100% expected and
| 100% on you. You can argue that it's not a great customer
| experience.. But again, the engineer understands that.
| bmacho wrote:
| > Mate. This guy is a software engineer and taking time
| out of his day to help a client on a forum and explaining
| why this might happen..
|
| Yep. That explains why is it gross, controversial, and
| admits a scam. Which is okay, I guess. I've read much
| worse. (For example, in this very thread. From the person
| I'm just answering.)
|
| I was just surprised that someone reading it felt that he
| needs to give money Kagi immediately. We are different.
|
| > It's also not a scam. If you sign up for a trial that
| tells you you'll be charged at the end and don't bother
| to notify yourself.. That's 100% legal, 100% expected and
| 100% on you.
|
| First, no, it's not legal. Especially with
| but with Kagi I expected better - especially since the
| email offering the new free trial promised "A month on
| us", and said "Click here to activate your trial, no
| strings attached".
|
| Second, they at Kagi didn't want this (according to what
| they said). It _just happened_ (again, according to what
| they said). No refunds tho (again, according to what they
| said).
| FrinkleFrankle wrote:
| I clearly skimmed the thread too much. The quote from
| your e-mail is definitely misleading.
|
| I do not like to see a helpful engineer being given a
| hard time.. But that is a worse look for Kagi than I was
| aware of.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| > _will look into adding a workaround for this auto-
| renewal so that we can prevent that in the future for
| other users_
|
| What more do you want? A user complained, they offered a
| refund _and_ they said they would look into fixing it.
| bmacho wrote:
| Automatic refund everyone involved?
| vincnetas wrote:
| so should they refund everyone who had free trial and
| started paying afterwards? what if they wanted to start
| paying?
| jrmg wrote:
| As far as I remember, this 'try us again for 30 days'
| promotion was explicitly for previous subscribers, so I
| would not say this was a corner case.
| freedomben wrote:
| Ah, if that's true that does make this a little less
| excusable. I still don't think it's nefarious, but I do
| think it's a pretty bad and embarrasing bug on Kagi's
| part.
| infecto wrote:
| I realize Kagi is loved here, heck I use it myself but
| this pattern does come off at best lazy engineering and
| at worst scammy. Their marketing email pitches it off as
| no strings attached but there is a case where it will
| auto charge you at the end.
|
| I think some of the ton is a little aggressive but it
| does seem like something that a lot of other companies
| would maybe get called out for.
| jrmg wrote:
| It's plausible that I didn't see the email because it got
| spam filtered away, so I totally believe that one was sent.
|
| On contacting support: to your (Kagi's) credit, Kagi did
| cancel the subscription and refund the fee after I
| contacted support. But if I hadn't been scrutinising my
| credit card statements for other reasons, I suspect it may
| have been a few months before I noticed.
|
| [edit: Thinking more: if their 'no fee if you don't use it'
| policy actually works, I guess I wouldn't be charged more
| than the one month. Although that makes it even less likely
| I'd've noticed.]
| joseda-hg wrote:
| Depending on the dates, "no fee if you don't use it"
| might not have been in place yet
| Marsymars wrote:
| > But if I hadn't been scrutinising my credit card
| statements for other reasons
|
| A bit off-topic, but rather than scrutinizing credit card
| statements, I find it much better to get email
| notifications of transactions - that way I can review
| transactions as they're made and fresh in mind, and I
| notice fraudulent or unwanted transactions right away.
| nottorp wrote:
| > This is not something we intentionally do here, and is a
| feature of Stripe to automatically renew at the end of a
| trial if there is a payment method present.
|
| Blaming Stripe?
| rocmcd wrote:
| > Blaming Stripe?
|
| Explaining Stripe?
| FrinkleFrankle wrote:
| Email is not the best notification method these days. I'd
| suggest having a notifications delivered directly in kagi's
| interface as well. Maybe a banner for an ending trial
| period.
|
| I have been using Kagi since the start. You guys are doing
| an incredible job.
| megiddo wrote:
| Hey, I've been a subscriber for a while. I love it. I wear
| the tshirt.
|
| Thank you.
| HanClinto wrote:
| YMMV, but because search is my gateway to the web, I think of
| my Kagi subscription less like a charge for an optional service
| (like Netflix / Hulu), and more like paying an ISP to be my
| access to the web.
| Liquix wrote:
| FWIW it's possible to replace the streaming services with
| something like Jellyfin+Radarr+Sonarr or Kodi+RealDebrid to cut
| the bill down to <$50/yr, and you also get access to media on
| all streaming services. leaves plenty of room in the budget for
| things that can't be self-hosted (like a proper search engine).
| some may cite ethical concerns but i don't think HBO execs
| making money hand over fist are concerned about ethics at all
| mac-attack wrote:
| Why not just avoid their services instead of pirating their
| content and matching the ethics of their execs?
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| Why not just do something else than watch shows your
| friends and family are watching?
|
| Clearly, they enjoy the content. You don't just stop
| enjoying things like that.
| afavour wrote:
| I think the point the OP is making is that just because
| you can doesn't mean you should. And I agree.
|
| If you feel streamers are offering a bad deal, don't take
| them up on the deal and find something else to do. If you
| want to watch shows your friends and family are watching,
| take the deal.
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| Ah, I thought they were just confused.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Hey, what do you do for living? Can I have some of that
| for free?
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| Sure! https://kagi.com/search?q=how+to+make+websites&r=us
| &sh=jJWfn...
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Oh wow, thank you.
| SSLy wrote:
| because their services aren't fungible
| behringer wrote:
| It's not piracy because they've made it clear that digital
| ownership is not actually ownership.
| thmoonbus wrote:
| As someone who has several friends and family who work in the
| mid / lower tiers of the entertainment industry... if you
| want to pirate, fine, but don't act like you're performing a
| noble act. Are entertainment execs grossly overpaid and
| exploitative? Sure - not unlike many industries. But lower
| revenue and lower subscriber numbers do have an impact on the
| money that trickles down (yes, trickles, sadly) to employees.
|
| I say this mostly because the tech set seems OK with content
| piracy in a way that they wouldn't be OK with say,
| shoplifting. I don't see people recommending walking out with
| a pair of Airpods from best buy because of Apple's ethical
| breaches.
| tumdum_ wrote:
| You should be more worried about Meta doing piracy than
| individuals: https://torrentfreak.com/meta-torrented-
| over-81-tb-of-data-t...
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Why? They've gave it back to society in form of Llama
| models; it's a great and strongly positive development.
| tumdum_ wrote:
| So copyright matters only sometimes? If that's so, I bet
| anyone who consumed pirated content has had some positive
| impact on the society because of it.
| opello wrote:
| The ends justifying the means is a pretty popular
| argument these days.
| thmoonbus wrote:
| I agree, and I am?
| alextingle wrote:
| Shoplifting and copyright violation are not comparable.
|
| Most of us on this site produce copyrighted works for
| money. Many of us are pretty knowledgable about how
| copyright works, as it's an integral part of our
| livelihood. So please don't try to promulgate that weird
| media industry propaganda here.
| thmoonbus wrote:
| Ah yeah the weird propaganda that people labor to make
| creative output, and if you value that output and have
| the means, you should consider paying for it.
|
| Also, read what I wrote: "if you want to pirate, fine,
| but don't act like you're performing a noble act". What
| specifically bugs me is less so the act - I assume few
| among us haven't engaged in illegal streaming, paywall
| bypassing, password sharing etc. - it's the weird
| contortions people go through to frame piracy as a noble
| endeavor vs. just admitting they're being too cheap to
| pay for something.
| Fnoord wrote:
| For me it is rather can no longer afford, and cutting
| back on dependency on USA.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| As long as your time is worth <$50/yr...
| Derbasti wrote:
| I finished my 30 day trial the other week, and went back to
| DDG. After a few days, I realized I didn't miss anything, so
| I'll happily stay with DDG. Perhaps I'm not a very discerning
| searcher. Most of my searches are bang-searches of Wikipedia or
| CPP or Python anyway.
|
| Still, I'd be fine with supporting a sustainable search engine.
| $10/more is a bit too steep for my liking, though, measured
| against the utility I get from it.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| 10 dollars is like, a sandwich. Access to your search engine
| for a month is less useful than a sandwich?
| freedomben wrote:
| Did you miss the part about them using DDG? They _do_ have
| access to their search engine.
|
| If the choice were between no search engine or paid search
| engine, then your point is a good one, but that's not the
| choice here.
|
| I'm a very happy Kagi subscriber btw. I think it's worth
| the money. I love the personal uprank/downrank feature and
| Quick Answers personally and get a lot of value from them.
| But if I didn't use those it might not be worth it to me
| either.
| nottorp wrote:
| > 10 dollars is like, a sandwich
|
| In Silicon Valley?
|
| Does Kagi only want to sell to techbros?
| mulmen wrote:
| How much can a bana- er, sandwich cost?
|
| I just checked McDonalds in my hometown in Idaho. A Big
| Mac is $5.99 for just the sandwich and $10.68 for a meal.
| A Double Quarter Pounder is $8.29 for just a sandwich.
|
| McDonalds is definitely on the cheap side so $10.00 seems
| like a reasonable estimate of "sandwich money".
|
| No need to invoke tech bros or silicon valley. Certainly
| no need to invent a motive.
| alexjplant wrote:
| Nice troll. A footlong Ultimate BMT is $11.29 in Wichita
| before taxes (I just checked).
|
| Kagi builds an excellent product for a very fair price.
| Direct your ire elsewhere.
| aaronbp wrote:
| $10 is a reasonable price for a sandwich in any decent
| sandwich shop in the US.
|
| I live in Mississippi, crappiest economy in the nation. I
| assume people are thinking they meant the cost of a
| homemade bologna sandwich or something, otherwise this
| conversation is pretty absurd.
| pimeys wrote:
| I'm in the capital city of Germany, a sandwich in the
| bakery around the corner is about 3-4 euros.
| aaronbp wrote:
| Wish I could say I was surprised. I bet the bread is
| better too.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| ^ In America, you have to remember that we overpay for
| crappier food.
| pimeys wrote:
| Depends. Not always.
|
| But there is this one shop selling shawarma sandwich made
| to fresh bread that costs 3.90EUR. And that is already a
| good lunch.
|
| A doner sandwich can cost 2.90EUR the cheapest.
|
| Bakeries have baguettes with cheese and ham for 4-5
| euros.
|
| If you go to Mitte, a doner can already be 6-9 euros. And
| that is expensive.
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| No, but they also don't wanna sell to the entire planet.
| There's definitely a market for a 10$ search engine,
| since it doesn't make money by maximizing eyeballs it
| doesn't have to cater to the planet.
|
| Not everyone has a cooled mattress, AC, car etc.. "Are
| all those things only for techbros"?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| $10 is many sandwiches.
| buzzerbetrayed wrote:
| It's also less than a single sandwich. Not sure how "it
| depends on the sandwich" adds to the conversation. The
| point still remains.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| The point they were making is: look, it's so cheap it's
| the cost of one sandwich.
|
| Does that point still stand if it's not the cost of one
| sandwich, unless you're paying a fortune for a sandwich?
| vitaflo wrote:
| If a diff shop has a sandwich that is 90% as good and is
| free but has ads plastered all over the walls, I will
| probably take the free sandwich.
| timeinput wrote:
| The cost of a sandwich ranges beyond $0.50 to $200.00. It
| depends on the sandwich adds about as much to the
| conversation as "it costs less than a sandwich".
|
| And to be clear by "beyond" I mean some sandwiches cost
| less than $0.50, and some sandwiches cost more than
| $200.00
| neogodless wrote:
| "It's one banana, Michael. What could it cost, $10?"
| jzb wrote:
| The thing is, subscriptions do add up. Lots of folks are
| carrying a bunch of $10 a month subscriptions that
| individually are no big but when added up start tacking on
| $100-$200 a month to their bills.
|
| I'm a big proponent of paying for things instead of using
| ad-supported things, so I don't mind paying for Kagi --
| _but_ I also have subscriptions and other monthly payments
| that make me think hard before signing up for a new one.
| $10 a month for Kagi, $10 for a webcomic Patreon, $5 for a
| musician 's Patreon, $10 a month to support
| Mastodon.social, $10 a month to Internet Archive, and an
| assortment of other monthly (or yearly) subs/payments...
| plus streaming, plus ... it adds up.
|
| Ideally if more people were supporting these things the
| monthly charges could be less -- e.g., if Kagi had more
| users their monthly could be $5 instead -- but pricing and
| getting people to pony up is hard.
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| I think it's important to divide your subscriptions into
| different categories to make wise choices. My categories
| are utility, tools, entertainment, education, and 501c.
|
| I have no problem paying for tools if the value is there,
| so I minimize my spending in other categories. Every
| quarter I review subscriptions, switch some from monthly
| to yearly to save money, cancel some, adjust levels on
| others.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| Kagi isn't competing against no access to a search engine,
| it's competing against Google, DDG, etc etc which are free
| (or more specifically, you could say ads are the cost).
|
| Kagi needs to not just be worth $10, but also worth ($10 -
| ads) more than the alternatives.
| TexanFeller wrote:
| It is EASILY worth that. It's a tool that I use
| constantly every day for work and at home. I literally
| never fall back to using Google anymore. Google results
| turned to doggie doo years ago and getting what I need at
| the top of the list again is worth every penny. Kagi is
| like Google from 10 years ago if they had kept optimizing
| it for quality instead of enshitifying it to increase
| revenue.
| ysavir wrote:
| I'm glad it provided you with that much value! When I
| gave Kagi a try, the results weren't as impactful for me,
| so paying for the service didn't make sense. Things have
| different values to different people, and that's okay.
| ewhanley wrote:
| It always seems like there's no one less willing to pay for
| software than those who create it for a living
| toxik wrote:
| It's a sandwich _subscription_. If you keep thinking like
| that, it's death by a thousand cuts.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| I think that's sort of the nature of sandwiches. You have
| to keep paying for them if you want to keep eating them.
| Thrymr wrote:
| The nature of subscriptions is that you keep paying for
| them forever whether you're eating them or not. Maybe you
| forgot about your sandwiches and they're just piling up
| on your doorstep.
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| Kagi implemented automatic pausing on your subscription
| if you don't use it, so it's actually not the same here.
| Fnoord wrote:
| For a myriad of reasons I'm cutting back on American
| subscriptions (am European). Kagi has a soft spot near my
| heart, so it is likely one of those going out last.
|
| If sandwiches are $10 for you and not worth much, might I
| ask you to support my subscription instead? Because when I
| make a sandwich myself, the costs are approx 0,50 EUR, and
| that is the type of food I can afford.
|
| It is the same with this 'it is only a cup of coffee' or
| 'only a beer'. I don't drink beer, I do drink coffee, but
| when I did drink beer the special beers were lower than the
| prices of the ones you pay in pubs. As for coffee, it just
| shows you're from San Francisco or something, cause we got
| free coffee at work in our culture here.
|
| Moreover, there's enough people in this world for whom $10
| a month is a huge deal, and all your comment shows is that
| you're either unaware of such or simply don't care.
| xeonmc wrote:
| Pro tip : there is a DuckDuckGo lite version
| dhc02 wrote:
| As my income drops in slow periods, I pause subscriptions to
| many things. The very last two I would be willing to give up
| are (n-1): YouTube Premium and (n): Kagi.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Switched to nebula when they removed YouTube lite and the
| price was double. Got no ads on my devices anyway.
| zaneyard wrote:
| Firefox (and probably others) allows you to set up custom
| search engines (like Wikipedia). So when I know I am trying
| to get to Wikipedia or npm or whatever I just do an
| @wikipedia and type my search.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| I've used keyword search for many years, maybe since
| Netscape. Set it up and type "w thing", no quotes. Can be a
| lot shorter.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Just FYI, if you run out of your 300, you can simply renew on
| that date. So if 300 searches lasts you 21 days, you're
| effectively paying between $5 and $10 per month. If you run out
| halfway, though, it's cheaper to pay for unlimited.
| mossTechnician wrote:
| That's interesting. It makes you _think_ about searching. It
| makes you think about the limits, it makes you think about the
| fact you already paying them for the privilege, it occupies
| just a little bit of your mind.
|
| It's a clever trick, kind of like how Amazon knows that if you
| subscribe to their Prime service, you might think about Amazon
| when you're about to buy something online.
| Zambyte wrote:
| > But I have not objectively done comparisons to try to figure
| out if it's better or not.
|
| The default search results are nice quality, comparable to
| Google (they use Google as one of their sources for results).
| The customization is what makes it head and shoulders better
| than the rest. I usually don't even see Kagi. In my workflow.
| Combining snaps, ! (I'm feeling lucky bang), and account level
| raising and lowering, I can pretty much get exactly where I
| want on the web just from a query in my URL bar that navigates
| straight there.
| tombert wrote:
| A friend of mine and I split the cost of a family plan
| ($20/month) and that way we have four extra accounts to use for
| our family and the like. The amortized cost is pretty
| reasonable then.
|
| I'm ok paying a few bucks simply because it gives the site a
| means of making money that _isn 't_ selling my data or
| tunneling me into some kind of marketing ML model.
|
| And the results really do feel better. I almost never do the !g
| like I did with DuckDuckGo, and being able to set my own
| weights for sites is genuinely great. Instead of some arbitrary
| machine learning model, I have my _actual_ intelligence to
| assist with the rankings.
| SllX wrote:
| I justify it by having less Disney/Hulu/Max and I've just cut
| down on entertainment related subscriptions in general,
| although you can pry YouTube Premium from my cold dead hands.
| guywithahat wrote:
| I think part of what's tough is I use two search engines + 2
| LLM's, depending on what I'm trying to do. It's easy when most
| of them are free, but if I'm going to pay money it needs to be
| much better than the rest, and I don't think Kagi is.
| II2II wrote:
| > I don't like the 300 search limit, because it scratches my
| brain - "do I need to search for this? can I find it some other
| way? should I just use duckduckgo for this search?"
|
| I have been using the free 300 search trial for several months
| now, and have not found it limiting. In a way, it highlights
| the strength of the search engine since I devote more time to
| reading the sites it directs me to than sifting through search
| results or refining my query. In other words, I am spending
| less time searching and more time pursuing the fruits of those
| searches. I am also okay with the idea of using different
| search engines for different purposes. I have a general idea of
| which queries will produce good results on DDG or Google, and
| use those search engines in those cases. I also have a general
| idea of which queries will generate terrible results on DDG or
| Google, and reach for Kagi in those cases.
|
| > I'm largely allergic to subscriptions. Still, if I can spend
| $360/year on Disney/Hulu/Max, I should be able to upgrade my
| search experience.
|
| I am allergic to subscriptions, which is likely why I am
| working within the bounds of Kagi's free trial for as long as I
| can. Once I have used up those queries, there will be a
| decision to make. Thankfully they are advertising $5/month for
| 300 queries. It's something that I can live with, even if I do
| go hog-wild with queries using the model that I have settled
| upon. Still, I have to get over that allergy first.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| The assistant is nice, you can just drop down and select your LLM
| of choice.
|
| I also like https://blog.kagi.com/kagi-privacy-pass, if you use
| it they know that you've paid, but they still can't correlate
| your search queries with your billing identity. So thoughtful.
| eviks wrote:
| > A search for "travel to UK" brought up the UK government page
| to apply for an ETA as the first result.
|
| Google's first result is the official government website that is
| summarized as requiring ETA (so you don't even need to click)
|
| Now that you know the name, adding "apply ETA" to the query also
| gives you the official government website as the first result
|
| Is that really a serious complaint about the fall of search
| quality?
| jccalhoun wrote:
| I have considered paying for Kagi and I use their Orion browser
| on my ipad but with current government fuckery making my job less
| secure than it was last year, I don't think I should.
|
| I tend to use bing as my default if only because they give you
| points in return for harvesting your data that you can redeem for
| amazon gift cards. Years ago I wrote a userscript to add a link
| to other search engines on bing and I still find myself heading
| to google regularly. (the script is half broken at the moment.
| Fixing it is on my list of things to do this summer)
| esafak wrote:
| Imagine a product so bad they have to dole out gift cards to
| make people use it. Are you saying you can use google through
| bing and get paid??
|
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6UepmSNd3TY
| harshitaneja wrote:
| My experience with Kagi was not as positive as everyone else's
| here. I didn't find the search results to be better and perhaps
| that's because I am used to google foo to extract decent results
| there. So I made Kagi my default engine everywhere and used it
| exclusively for more than a month before giving up. The response
| time for search results isn't too long but that difference from
| google's response time, which I had come to rely on
| subconsciously for all my queries through a day, was too jarring
| and even after a month I couldn't get used to it. Having had an
| adblocker and Youtube Premium I don't really ever see any
| advertisements anywhere anyway so I couldn't find the value there
| too.
|
| I would love to pay for search again and not be the product but
| as of my last experiment(Nov 2024) Kagi wasn't that for me.
| Curious to know if anyone else had such an experience or perhaps
| something I need to re-evaluate.
| jetbalsa wrote:
| Daily user for a few years now, the response times have not
| gotten that much better, but I do like the assistant feature of
| their higher tiers so I've stayed on for now.
| Zambyte wrote:
| The assistant recently was made available to all tiers, with
| only the more expensive models being limited to the higher
| tier.
| abtinf wrote:
| What is the value of low latency when the first page results
| are garbage?
| p_j_w wrote:
| GP literally said in their first sentence that results
| quality wasn't improved with Kagi.
| chipsrafferty wrote:
| I tend to agree. I would pay money solely for the features that
| let you block sites, uprank and downrank sites, but use Google
| instead. Bonus points if they block the Gemini stuff.
| vinnymac wrote:
| I have had a similar experience. After using Kagi, I don't
| really get why someone would pay for what they are offering
| today.
| coldpie wrote:
| This has also been my experience. The search quality is no
| better. When I ask people directly what they like about Kagi,
| it's all about the customization stuff (custom search
| operators; denylisting domains; etc). I do see the appeal of
| that, but I don't personally care enough about those features
| to pay for it.
| qudat wrote:
| You also get Kagi assistant which is nice
| Lariscus wrote:
| I used Kagi for a while and liked it but I no longer use it
| because it is a US company and searching with them requires an
| account that makes tracing my search queries back to me trivial.
| esafak wrote:
| https://blog.kagi.com/kagi-privacy-pass
| Lariscus wrote:
| I like it, but that still leaves metadata like the fact that
| I have an account at all. With the low user numbers of Kagi
| any privacy guarantee by them is an illusion. Since Kagi is
| operating out of a country without any privacy laws that
| could protect me, I will not use their services.
| prinny_ wrote:
| I tried Kagi for 3 months, both for personal and work related
| queries and honestly I didn't find that many differences with
| Google. The top results were the same.
|
| There was a time I was interested in finding results from the
| small web such as personal blogs or local stores and Kagi did
| indeed provide better results, but I couldn't justify paying a
| monthly subscription over that.
| lucasyvas wrote:
| If anything your description could be justification for _some_
| people to pay for it.
| tigroferoce wrote:
| I personally would pay even if the results were _slightly_
| worse. But for me they are as good or better than Google.
|
| I also use a lot the assistant, so I'm happy customer so far.
| mvieira38 wrote:
| If you only use it occasionally, you can pay for the 300
| searches a month plan and they won't bill you until you exceed
| that amount
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Last year I was still sifting through irrelevant results, however
| the link pollution was much less compared to Google. I'll try it
| again, but I'm still not prepared to buy something that requires
| me to perform additional refining on top of a service that is a
| refining service.
| righthand wrote:
| It's a refining service in that you the user can refine search
| results. I'm not sure what refinement you think Kagi is doing
| but they aren't combing through search results for you. No
| other search engine allows you to do this. It is very powerful
| and worth every penny. It has shown me that there are indeed
| more content sites outside of the major ones on the internet. I
| have completely deranked reddit and spam sites and now get
| great variety of content and control of that content through
| Kagi.
| mkbelieve wrote:
| Kagi rules for search, and they also have the best AI front end
| in my opinion.
| theusus wrote:
| I tried Kagi and Brave. I get similar results on both but Brave
| is cheaper and AI answers.
| bearjaws wrote:
| Recently converted 2 coworkers to Kagi, their minds we're blown
| when I was sharing screen and had no ads and relevant search
| results.
| waiwai933 wrote:
| I did a free 30 day Kagi trial a month ago, and while I'm not
| sure I'm convinced the search results are better, they're
| definitely not worse. I've only fallen back to Google thrice, and
| in every case, Google didn't find anything useful either.
|
| That said, the most astonishing thing was that I apparently do
| 100 searches a day, so 3k a month... I'm a bit sad that Kagi
| doesn't offer opt-in search history because I want to know what
| it is I'm searching for! (it's across three devices so looking at
| browser history is just above the threshold of how much effort I
| want to put in)
| rkangel wrote:
| I've been using Kagi for almost 18 months. In that time we've had
| a baby, and I have done many many searches about baby related
| things. It took _months_ after he was born before I started
| getting any baby related targeted advertising (I 'm pretty sure
| it was a result of a Facebook post). Whereas for the other
| parents, every advert they've seen has been baby stuff since well
| before the baby was born.
|
| I like Kagi, I like the principle of aligned priorities over my
| privacy and I like the search quality. But that really cemented
| why it's worth it to me.
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| Been a kagi user for years. My only complaint is for a given
| search it will only return 30ish results vs google that will do
| about 10 pages of results.
|
| Usually the first 2 are the ones I'm looking for, but doing a
| deep dive is a lot harder on kagi
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| I wish there was a discounted plan that didn't include "AI" - if
| the search is good, that's all I'm looking for in a search
| engine.
| billbrown wrote:
| For me (a multi-year paying subscriber), one of the many
| indications of Kagi's difference is a) that it has a changelog
| and b) that the changelog shows so much granular work.
|
| https://kagi.com/changelog
| kristofferR wrote:
| Not only that, but they also have an issue tracker/FR page [1]
| and a Discord server [2]. It feels way more human and less
| corporate than Google.
|
| [1] https://kagifeedback.org/ [2] https://kagi.com/discord
| MostlyStable wrote:
| While this is true, it's one part of Kagi that I wouldn't
| expect to _remain_ true if they every actually got mainstream
| success. That human /less corporate feel is less an effect of
| their mission goals than it is their very small size.
|
| They may never become huge (they are explicitly building
| their business model such that it doesn't require growth to
| succeed), but if they ever do, they will be able to maintain
| their mission and goals, but they almost certainly won't be
| able to maintain that small, human feel.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| did this guy sell his apple stock and joined early on kagi
| private equity?
| jhickok wrote:
| I moved to Kagi when Chrome moved to end Manifest V2. I am aware
| of workarounds, but I have really been moving to de-google my
| life. Honestly, I have been happy with the results and I think
| it's good to have various competitors out there. I even use Orion
| Browser for most personal browsing, and it has been acceptable
| with a few bugs here and there.
| jordemort wrote:
| No
| senorqa wrote:
| 99.99% of the time I use self-hosted instance of Searx-NG
| https://github.com/searxng/searxng You can easily co-host it with
| other apps on e.g. digitalocean for 4$ pcm. It's also highly
| customizable and your instance of Openweb UI can use it as search
| engine too.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| I do all searching from the command line. No browser. It's funny
| but I feel like google.com, both www and news, are faster in
| recent months, specifically, after Google began blocking requests
| with certain user-agent strings. Because I search from the
| command line, I do not get any "AI" answers. Obviously command
| line search is faster than browser-based search. But what I am
| observing is that command line search now seems even faster than
| it was in the past.
| prirai wrote:
| What tools do you use for command line searching?
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Currently, the script looks like this
| #!/bin/sh 0x $1|yy084|yy030|yy073
|
| "0x" is another Almquist shell script that can search about
| 63 different servers that return search results, e.g.,
| Google, DDG, and so on.^1
|
| yy___ are UNIX filters written in C.
|
| 0x uses some yy proggrams as well, e.g., yy025, along with
| sed and a TCP client, e.g., tcpclient, netcat, socat, bssl,
| openssl, etc.
|
| yy084 outputs SERPs as SQL.
|
| This makes it easy to create simplified "mixed" SERPs with
| results from different servers.
|
| Where possible 0x allows for "continuation search". Going
| past page 1 of SERPs is discouraged or even prevented in
| recent times, all focus is on "the top result",^2 and some
| www search engines actively try to block exhaustive research
| and discovery. By continuing searches over time, e.g., page 1
| of results on day 1, page 2 on day 2, page 3 on day 5, etc.,
| one can sometimes avoid being blocked when doing exhaustive
| searches.
|
| 1. This is an ongoing experiment. Sometimes a site will
| "break" if the site operator changes something but this does
| not happen too often. Majority have remained stable over
| time.
|
| 2. This coincidentally benefits an advertising services
| racket.
| mcpar-land wrote:
| I only have good things to say about Kagi. The search results are
| better, I can block or downrank SEO slop while increasing the
| rank of sites I like. There's no advertising anywhere, no
| sponsored results, no AI hallucination taking up the whole top
| quarter of the page.
|
| But the most important part is that it's very likely that there
| will _never be_ sponsored results. The business model means their
| incentive lines up with mine - give me good search and I'll give
| you ten bucks a month. If your search starts to suck, I'm not
| going to keep paying.
| 0_gravitas wrote:
| 25$ a month user here and quite happy with just how _quiet_
| results are, equally so with the Assistant output when I 've used
| it.
| mapumbaa wrote:
| Just go for metaGer instead. Non-profit and based in Germany.
| mac-attack wrote:
| searXNG is a good alternative. As a search engine aggregator, you
| can hand pick the engines you want to utilize for searches,
| including GitHub and HuggingFaces and DDG and StartPage etc. It
| also has bang functionality, active development and public
| instances if you do not want to spin up one yourself.
| nedt wrote:
| I'm actually happy with the duckduckgo results and also have a
| couple of bangs I use regularly. My biggest issue with using Kagi
| would be that I have to log in. I tend to clear cookies, either
| automated when closing a tab or by using a private browser, and
| would always have to relogin.
| kristofferR wrote:
| Nope, they've solved that:
|
| https://help.kagi.com/kagi/privacy/privacy-pass.html
| handsclean wrote:
| Session links are what you're looking for. Privacy Pass
| doesn't work if you clear cookies, and in fact will lock you
| out of Privacy Pass for a month if you clear cookies maybe
| four times. Ask me how I found out.
|
| https://help.kagi.com/kagi/privacy/private-browser-
| sessions....
| bigyabai wrote:
| Me too, actually. I'm starting to think this "buy Kagi!"
| movement is being pushed by people who didn't even know they
| could change their default search provider.
| ctvo wrote:
| As a long time Kagi user, the thing I miss the most is Google
| Maps integration for search results. It's nice to search for a
| restaurant or an address, see results for it, and with one click
| open up Google Maps to see how to get there and nearby
| attractions. Google Maps is such a large moat for Google,
| especially in locations that Apple Maps (the only real
| alternative) has poor coverage.
|
| Outside of that use case, I enjoy using Kagi and recommend it to
| most people.
| KoolKat23 wrote:
| Absolutely agree.
|
| Although Google's kneecapped their own Google maps integration
| in the EU.
|
| If it's of any help, on the top right there's a more shortcut
| to Google maps when searching an address in Kagi.
|
| Although that's two clicks, would be to Kagi's advantage if
| they make this process one click or better, especially in the
| EU.
| SietrixDev wrote:
| This. I didn't know it was EU only thing, but sometimes you
| have a map displayed in Google search results and there's no
| way to actually go to Google Maps beside clicking
| "directions" button (and I think even this button isn't
| always there).
|
| Just recently I've created a bang in Kagi which redirects me
| to Google Maps roughly around my home with a query that I
| typed.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Would an OpenStreetMap integration be sufficient to replace
| this functionality?
| KoolKat23 wrote:
| In my opinion, no it's too shit compared to Google Maps,
| Apple Maps is also not great. Kagi have their own maps, which
| it seems is based on Apple Maps. Apple has no information
| outside the US (heard its better in the US but I just know
| it's not great in Europe or Africa). Things like operating
| hours.
| Marsymars wrote:
| FWIW I found Google Maps to be terrible on that front in
| Japan. Posted operating hours seemed to have no particular
| relation to whether a restaurant would actually be open or
| not.
| mimischi wrote:
| Not OP, but I heavily rely on Google Maps reviews. Haven't
| found another platform that replaces them.
| Marsymars wrote:
| I assume it's region specific. There used to be
| alternatives in my area, but they've all died, and even
| with all the fake Google reviews, it's the only way to get
| an idea about restaurants.
| poincaredisk wrote:
| Just to add a different voice: I prefer OSM and for me it
| would be great.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| No, Google Maps is miles ahead of all competitors.
| pjm331 wrote:
| Yeah that's the only type of search that I always append the !g
| to
| frereubu wrote:
| You can shorten that to !gm if you want to go straight to
| Google Maps.
| kevincox wrote:
| Or just set up a browser search keyword/engine to go
| straight to Google Maps if that is what you want. I have
| Kagi as my default but have a small handful of keyword
| bookmarks set up for when I am making something that isn't
| a general web search. "m <location>" for Google Maps, "i
| <title>" for IMDB, "p <query>" for Kagi image search, "d
| <query>" for D&D Rules Search, you get the idea.
|
| This way Kagi doesn't even see my query, I don't need to
| wait for the redirect, I get to set up the shortcuts myself
| and I can switch any of my search providers (even the
| default) without affecting my "bangs".
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Yes, kagi has a Google maps link built in but it doesn't
| integrate very smoothly. It ends up linking to strange results
| in Google maps. I would almost prefer that kagi just integrated
| Google maps until the kagi maps product is mature. It's my only
| stumbling block using kagi
| poulpy123 wrote:
| I would suggest them to open a bit more their free tier. If you
| want to get people to pay 12-13EUR/month for search, you have to
| let check more than once the quality of your service
| barbazoo wrote:
| Even if Kagi wasn't better than Google or Bing I would still pay
| for it, simply because it's not Microsoft and not Google. No way
| I'm going to give _them_ any money if I don 't have to.
| Arathorn wrote:
| The ETA scams (which bit me when rushing through an eTA form when
| transiting through Canada a few years ago) are more sinister than
| just overcharging you by $70 - it looks horribly like they gather
| your passport details and way more personal information than the
| actual eTA application requires, presumably for data brokerage
| purposes. :|
| dkarl wrote:
| I switched out of resentment towards Google and have been
| pleasantly surprised to discover that I actually prefer Kagi. I
| still use Google Maps heavily and prefer Google Search for one
| particular task (finding soccer news) but I am much happier with
| Kagi as my default search engine. I rarely feel like it's holding
| me back, and when I do, Kagi lets me get to Google with two
| clicks. I think I could get that down to one click if I cared...
| but I don't.
| thi2 wrote:
| My initial feeling with kagi is that it feels like google used to
| before it went downhill. So far I'm testing my first premium
| month and will continue to use it. It would be nice to have a
| unlimited search tier without AI thats a bit cheaper tho.
| schmorptron wrote:
| FYI, I think the $10 plan that's now "basic AI" used to just be
| the unlimited search plan and they just recently added a
| limited capacity of the AI stuff to it.
| catapart wrote:
| Posting for the unaware, without commentary on the content - just
| an FYI because it's something that matters to me, at least:
|
| https://d-shoot.net/kagi.html
| yesfitz wrote:
| I read through the whole opinion piece.
|
| Which part matters to you? Because it's not obvious.
| mvieira38 wrote:
| I was also worried about their naive "trust the market
| incentives bro" stance about privacy, but they actually did
| implement Privacy Pass eventually, and I'm now a happy user.
| What I like about Kagi is that they are a real company (not a
| corporation) that actually might listen to the demands of their
| users, and have a real presence on HN, Reddit and Discord, so
| the bad stuff can change over time
| omgitspavel wrote:
| I also want to add that Kagi recently partnered with a Russian
| state-owned search engine Yandex:
| https://kagi.com/changelog#5340. This means they are paying
| money to the Russian state through taxes and sharing my search
| queries with it. This was a critical issue for me, and it led
| me to stop using it and request a refund earlier this year.
| 369548684892826 wrote:
| Exactly, glad I'm not the only one!
| parasti wrote:
| This is a critical issue to pretty much every EU citizen.
| switch007 wrote:
| And according to the link below, the Kagi founder/CEO claims
| Yandex is a private company headquartered in Kazakhstan,
| unrelated to the Russian government.
|
| https://ioc.exchange/@troed/113311987220115248
| mm263 wrote:
| This makes Vlad look much better than the poster thinks. It's
| ridiculous that the poster is dishing out, but when Vlad offers
| discussion (not even criticism!) they are like "oh no, I'm just
| a little nobody getting HARASSED by a powerful and might CEO".
| They can't take even the mildest disagreement, let alone
| criticism.
|
| People need to stop posting this blog post as if it's something
| incriminating, or even negative. I'm sure if GDPR is violated,
| Kagi will sort it out with their lawyers, but as of now I don't
| see what exactly are we worrying about. For me it's neither
| GDPR nor Vlad's "appalling" behaviour and if it's neither, this
| whole blog is utterly useless
| eGP9jDq_nw wrote:
| does kagi censor offensive results?
| gmiller123456 wrote:
| Have to say my experience differs from what most here have had.
| Mostly I just saw no improvement over using Google.
|
| It still returned lots of results that were paywalled, lots of
| results with more ads than content, results that didn't contain
| words I put in quotes. Apparently there's options to filter out
| certain sites, but it's pretty pointless if there are so many
| that the task is impossible to do manually.
|
| I've been using Duck Duck Go for a while. Can't say it's better,
| I even have the occasional search where ddg doesn't return
| results and revert to Google which does.
| icar wrote:
| Kagi is nice, I guess. I paid for 3 months, and it suffers from
| the same fate as all other search engines besides Google: bad
| search results for anything but English (and maybe Spanish?).
| Anyway, my language, Catalan, is an afterthought -searching in it
| will display results in other languages, specially Spanish, which
| is _very_ bad. Hopefully one day we can have a non-Google search
| engine that does i18n searches right.
| thi2 wrote:
| For german it works fine, how is duckduckgo doing with catalan?
| niuzeta wrote:
| I've been using Kagi since they first appeared here on
| hackernews, and I cannot be more impressed with them. The value
| proposition is crystal clear, and I know what I am getting. I
| love the customability, and I like that I'm paying for _search_.
| I'm getting the 2005-2007 Google vibes from them.
|
| I'm wearing my Kagi shirts to tech meetups and I do recommend it
| to my friends. I wish there would be a better way for me to
| "refer" a friend, but I like how straightforward they are.
|
| I do recommend Kago. It's a good service and you get what you pay
| for.
| zenGull wrote:
| Fwiw, give a searxng instance a try.
| temp0826 wrote:
| Kagi is something I want to use purely for their principles
| alone. But I still struggle to justify the cost. I'm not opposed
| to paying for anything- one (not directly, but comparable in my
| mind) service I pay for is NextDNS- if the cost were in that
| range it would be a complete no-brainer for me. I just hope the
| economies of scale can get there some day. (Keep it simple, don't
| add more cruft. The core product and idea is gold.)
| dddw wrote:
| Nextdns price is really good. 20 bucks per year. One can only
| get so many 5 buck per month subscriptions, because eventually
| they compound and it becomes just too much. It is the reason I
| haven't done Kagi, but search is getting worse and worse
| nowadays, so I might just do it soon. I'm typing this because I
| like to see more 1 to 3 bucks a month typs of services.
| praisewhitey wrote:
| >I just tried searching for "expedited passport renewal" in
| Google and in Kagi. Kagi presents as its first response the US
| State Department's "How to Get my U.S. Passport Fast" page.
| Google has that same link listed 7th
|
| It's the first result on Duckduckgo.
| coldpie wrote:
| It's the first result on Google for me, too.
|
| Edit: Oh, I see in the linked article that the author does not
| have an ad blocker installed. That's user error.
| dmje wrote:
| Of all the arguments, the "but it's expensive" one is the one I
| really fail to parse. Search is probably _the_ tool we all use
| day in and day out - it's critical to everything we do both at
| work and at home. Paying for it is only a mind stretch because
| we're so used to "free" but really, it's nothing. Two coffees for
| a search that isn't full of shit is an absolute no-brainer in my
| opinion.
| speckx wrote:
| After using Kagi for two years now, I can't go back to Google or
| Bing. On principle, I pay for the Ultimate package because I
| desperately want there to be something besides Google and Bing.
| dhc02 wrote:
| That also is a factor in why I pay for more than I need. I want
| them to succeed.
| superkuh wrote:
| I paid for 3 months. Kagi was okay, but it's not really a search
| engine like I use search engines. They only ever returned <200
| results per search query. So you had to depend on their system to
| magically know what results you wanted out of everything in
| existence. There was no way to look through the actual search
| results returned deeply.
|
| This "We know what you want, you don't get lists of stuff." is
| their core ideology. So I stopped paying them and use lots of
| other search engines.
| gpvos wrote:
| _> The results were all about obtaining an ETA and I picked a
| link that looked like the official UK government site. It was
| not; [...]_
|
| If you want an official website, always follow the link to the
| Wikipedia article, and there click on the link to the official
| website.
|
| Also, I find Duckduckgo a lot better than Google in general.
| switch007 wrote:
| No thanks. I'm not sending money and traffic to Yandex. I'm going
| to give Qwant a go (French company, headquartered in Paris)
| layoric wrote:
| Been using Kagi for about 18 months, and IMO well worth it. It
| does what is says on the tin, it's a search. You use it, it
| provides good results, and you're done. No fighting with ads, no
| making you automatically skipping the first few results because
| you know from experience they are promoted. You control what
| experience you want with specific domains. Privacy pass means you
| don't even have to be logged in.
|
| One gripe would be trying to use other features while using
| privacy pass. Eg, maps doesn't seem to work. They are regularly
| improving the experience though. And that's a key difference.
| Google is getting worse for their ad revenue, Kagi is getting
| better for paying customers.
| api wrote:
| I've used Kagi for over a year. It's been months since I've used
| Google. Now I also use LLMs (both local and hosted) along with
| Kagi, and Google is obsolete for search.
|
| Google's results are really awful, and it constantly nags me to
| install Chrome.
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