Kagi, the company behind a paid, private search engine1 of the same name, has announced it's bringing its Webkit-based Orion web browser to Linux. In a
  • mke@programming.dev
    201·
    1 day ago

    An article about Kagi’s leadership, uncontroversially titled “Why I lost faith in Kagi.” If anyone has updates to add here, good or bad, I’d appreciate it.

    Between the absolute blase attitude towards privacy, the 100% dedication to AI being the future of search, and the completely misguided use of the company’s limited funds, I honestly can’t see Kagi as something I could ever recommend to people.

    …and I’m surprised this quote doesn’t mention the CEO, considering what the blog post has to say about him.

    • A_norny_mousse@feddit.org
      21·
      10 hours ago

      Ouf, you got me down a rabbit hole. I’ll start at the end, where I clicked on a comment of yours laying out why Andreas Kling and Brendan Eich are assholes. This FOSS tendency to support 100% meritocracy becomes a bullshit lie the moment some lead devs use their position to spread vile views, deny harmless PRs to improve phrasing etc.
      I have yet to meet a single self-proclaimed “centrist” who isn’t just a racist/misogynyst/homophobe in sheep’s clothing.

      Meritocracy enables sociopaths.
      Well really it should be “Pure unadultarated meritocracy in FOSS development enables latent sociopathic behavior to come out unchecked in nerdy devs” or some such, but that’s not much of a slogan.

      Anyhow, about Kagi & Vlad & the writer of this blog post (I really read it all) - I am always so skeptical about FLOSS trying to go financially sustainable. Usually people applaud it because they think it’s a solution to “slow development and clunky UIs”, and usually people like Vlad like to support that feeling without really committing to anything.

      Also always interesting the lack of commitment when you press them about data collection. You can’t run a web app like this without data collection, and the distiction between personally identifyable, private, anonymised or anonymous is - facile because as legal terms they were coined by people who have no clue about fingerprinting and such.

      All in all I’m glad with the road I have chosen in device & software usage and just like the Brave hype did not get me, neither will the Kagi hype or the next one.

    • cosmicrookie@lemmy.world
      59·
      21 hours ago

      Come on… this comes up every time Kagi gets mentioned anywhere. Someone is personally hurt by the CEO and is now in a crusade to spread bad karma about them.

      As a product I really enjoyed Kagi for years and would still be my preferred search engine if I wasn’t switching away from US products and services. I am now using Qwant but honestly imo Kagi is pretty good and worth the money

      • mke@programming.dev
        102·
        19 hours ago

        I don’t see how your comment responds in any way to the criticism presented.

        this comes up every time Kagi gets mentioned anywhere.

        Because it’s relevant. Should I never share it because you’ve already seen it? What about those who haven’t? I haven’t seen Kagi properly address these issues. So I asked about newer developments I might’ve missed. No one volunteered any yet.

        Someone is personally hurt by the CEO and is now in a crusade to spread bad karma about them.

        The author clearly explains how they arrived at their stance, and it wasn’t just “hurt feelings.” I’m not claiming this was what you intended, but it feels like you’re trying to dramatize the criticism and downplay the issues rather than address them.

        I also don’t see the crusade thing. They wrote down their thoughts, then others found and shared them. They’re not the ones posting in ycombinator, or here. It’s people like me, unaffiliated with them. We just think more people should know.

        You finished saying you liked Kagi and think it’s good. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I don’t see how it helps here, either. I used Kagi for a short while and liked having more control over results, but… the issues remain. It’s beside the point.

        • cosmicrookie@lemmy.world
          46·
          19 hours ago

          The long and short of it is, Vlad wanted to get me on a call to discuss what he felt were “misunderstandings” in my post. I declined. He pressed a bit with more argument, I explicitly spelled out that I did not want to hear from him again. His response to “stop emailing me” was to write me a big essay arguing with my post (kind of, I’ll discuss this more). I sent one more reply reiterating for him to stop emailing me, and that was it.

          This to me more sounds like I have made up my mind to not like this guy or his product and nothing will change this. This is personal and even most of the issues being discussed are nit pickings at details and fights on being right or wrong on things that really don’t matter

          • mke@programming.dev
            41·
            9 hours ago

            This to me more sounds like I have made up my mind to not like this guy or his product and nothing will change this.

            That’s a really unfair reading of the situation. People aren’t obligated to listen to us and change their minds. As long as they’re willing, sure, do your best, but no means no. Vlad seemingly doesn’t understand no. That’s not good, and added to their previous insights, I can understand why the author wouldn’t want to enter a call with a such a person.

            most of the issues being discussed are nit pickings at details and fights on being right or wrong on things that really don’t matter

            It might help if you elaborate, but right now I can’t agree. For example, Vlad’s views on privacy and biases are kind of wild (no suicide hotlines numbers because they’re biased but also put LLMs everywhere) and that matters if you’re going to use his product to search information online (and possibly his e-mail service as well).

  • Zero@lemmy.caEnglish
    105·
    2 days ago

    Any word on Windows? Despite the discourse around Kagi using Yandex, they did advise me that they are still building thier own indexes that are planned to eventually replace thirds party ones.

    I’m still not a huge fan of the overuse of AI, but I do think Kagi is on the right track in a lot of other areas.

    edit: I’m in the Linux community… Ignore the first sentence 😅

      • BossDj@lemm.ee
        121·
        2 days ago

        Probably that engines are putting Ai in the forefront of searches lately

        • Ulrich@feddit.orgEnglish
          41·
          2 days ago

          Kagi doesn’t do that. It doesn’t even show you an AI response unless you specifically request it.

          • Baldur Nil@programming.dev
            22·
            1 day ago

            I wish there was a cheaper plan that didn’t involve AI at all. Like, I don’t care to have X prompts every month. I’d like to pay just for the engine.

            • Ulrich@feddit.orgEnglish
              32·
              1 day ago

              You do not pay anything different for AI prompts. You should really actually try the product before you make up all these things about it.

              • Baldur Nil@programming.dev
                21·
                1 day ago

                You do not pay anything different for AI prompts. You should really actually try the product before you make up all these things about it.

                But what you pay involves the calculated cost of using the AI, otherwise they’d be losing money if a lot of users were to make too many prompts. So it should be possible to have a lower price that didn’t give you any prompts.

                • Zero@lemmy.caEnglish
                  22·
                  1 day ago

                  The other poster is right… The base plans don’t contain any amount of “prompts” and are very reasonable /affordable.

      • Zero@lemmy.caEnglish
        21·
        1 day ago

        Maybe “overuse” isn’t the right word. “Over-investment” maybe.

        I think the Universal Summarizer and Quick Answer are okay but the Assistant just doesn’t do it for me. No one is forcing me to use it or pay for it however and I don’t run the company, so it’s a moot point…

        They’ve reiterated that AI is central to their mission, I just don’t find the LLM interfacing very compelling personally.

          • Zero@lemmy.caEnglish
            1·
            14 hours ago

            Yes, I know…I’m not saying I need to use it or that it’s forced on Kagi users. I’m saying that I personally don’t agree with the amount of investment and focus on the AI/LLM integrations. I believe the investment would be better spent building out the Kagi index as well as privacy & security functionality. Again, it’s a minor complaint and personal preference, not an attack on their business model, strategy or mission.

            I still pay for the Ultimate subscription because I believe in them thoroughly. I just personally don’t prefer to use LLMs most of the time.

    • BossDj@lemm.ee
      21·
      2 days ago

      So, duckduckgo also uses Yandex, right? I know Bing as their premier, but all these search engines use more than one source. I haven’t been able to see where any of them provide their entire list of sources. DDG and Kagi both previously listed Yandex and have since quietly disappeared their mention from their informational pages

      • Zero@lemmy.caEnglish
        1·
        1 day ago

        The reference used to live here, iirc. They updated the language to say “all major search results providers” rather than listing the actual names as they did previously.