I'll pay for a search engine when they are transparent about their algorithm.
Unlimited Kagi searches for $10 per month
251–260 of 983 posts
Re: Unlimited Kagi searches for $10 per month
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only lockin I have remaining to windows is video games really
Check out Proton.
Dosbox + Steam with Proton is the best PC gaming I've ever encountered.
There's a tiny gap in the early windows 9x days that I've been thinking of filling by upgrading my Dosbox Win 3.11 to Win 98. Overall though, it runs a greater percentage of dos/windows games than any dos/windows machine I've ever had access to.
(I'm considering moving to FreeBSD though. Dosbox runs fine, and Steam + Proton sort of works there, apparently. Checking it out in more depth soon.)
Re: Unlimited Kagi searches for $10 per month
#253I mostly use Duckduckgo these days but fall back on Google for non-English searches because DDG is lacking in that area. Kagi users, how good is Kagi for non-English searches?
Kagi in Dutch has been very good.
The last thing I've still been using Google for was looking up which Dutch retailers sold the product I was looking for. But now I see that was unnecessary.
Re: Unlimited Kagi searches for $10 per month
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can the search result quality be quantified somehow? I remember when Google was new, and I used to use Altavista and Hotbot and those older search engines, the difference in results were like night and day, and Google's results were "wow!" Does Kagi give a similar impression as Google did then?
> Can the search result quality be quantified somehow? Encourage you to try it. I've repeated Scott Galloway's mantra that advertisement is a tax on America's poor and stupid. But I never quite clocked the cost of search ads. It might be solely due to that lack of scrolling through crud that makes Kagi seem much, much faster than Google or DuckDuckGo.
Even those who don’t think ads affect them are mistaken. And if you extirpate ads completely from your life the tax is your time and effort to do so. That’s one of the most toxic mantras, it even seems purposefully misguiding.
Re: Unlimited Kagi searches for $10 per month
#255I have FOMO-like feeling whenever I use a different search engine.
Specially in programming, when the right article or stack overflow can save you an afternoon, the “I wonder if I would get better results if I was using Google” feeling is hard to shake.
Too many decades, I guess. I’m rooting for something like Kagi, though. I’m glad to pay $10 for such an essencial tool. And I’ll eventually be over that hump if it proves to be as good or better consistently.
Re: Unlimited Kagi searches for $10 per month
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hear you, but it's also really hard from the service provider's perspective because - for many people at least - the allotment of searches starts to become a hinderance on using it. By making it feel a finite resource, some percentage of the users will start to ration their use of your service and/or do some deliberation before using it ("I kinda want to look that up, but I don't know if I want to spend one of my s…
Yeah, exactly. I looked at Kagi last week (first time I had heard of it), when the $10/month plan was "only" 1,000 searches a month and "unlimited" was $25. While I think that I'll probably stay well within 1,000 searches, I'm also not sure, and it's just not something I want to have to worry about (it's ~33/day on average and I doubt I'll ever hit it, but still...) One of the reasons I decided to skip Kagi for now.
> it's ~33/day on average and I doubt I'll ever hit it
That's a bit misleading. If the search engine really is that good, you should use it more, and then all of a sudden you'll hit the cap. I probably don't search that much now but that's because it's not worth the trouble.
Re: Unlimited Kagi searches for $10 per month
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only lockin I have remaining to windows is video games really
The Steam Deck is Linux and runs a large majority of games. You can do it on your laptop with Proton. It's amazing. Even weird stuff like Mass Effect Remastered (which requires EA Play client) works on Linux now.
I've moved 95% of my gaming to Linux entirely, after the steam deck convinced me it had gotten this good, and I barely miss Windows. Occasionally I'll still boot over to Windows for something like iRacing or to just experience some of the better graphics features, but honestly I find I don't really miss them and the Linux gaming experience these days is pretty seamless, even with my wacky setup of i3 and nvidia.
Re: Unlimited Kagi searches for $10 per month
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
>This seems like the buffet or gym model where they want people just mindlessly paying and then not using it that much. I see this as the point to any subscription model. Of course they want you paying for more than you use/consume.
Right and this is the reason I don’t like subscriptions. Id rather buy things. I don’t want a car subscription. I want to buy a car. I don’t want a book subscription. I want to buy a car. I don’t a compute subscription. I want to buy compute hours. Etc etc
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Re: Unlimited Kagi searches for $10 per month
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 10 bucks a month for a tool that I use multiple times every single day is more than reasonable. This number really varies based on where you live, and there is no pricing model that accounts for this. I suppose it is mostly just aimed at Americans.
Some platforms actually do account for this by having special "developing countries" discounts, or some other euphemism like that. IIRC Gumroad is one that supports this.
This is an interesting challenge.
Part of the difficulty in doing this at early stage (without VC) is that your costs often don't scale in proportion to customer ability to pay.
A big chunk of the costs of running Kagi will come from external search indexes - their founder is active here and was pretty open about the impacts on costs when Bing raised their API pricing significantly. That's just one player in the market, but when Bing raises their prices, they don't offer discounts to make it cheaper for developing countries for users downstream.
With investment or a significant customer base in full-price countries, it's easier to subsidize a lower price model for developing markets. Trouble is, businesses like Kagi aren't in the business of getting eyeballs today for future monetization (which works fine as justification to grow user stats if someone else is footing the server bills, and is willing to buy future growth).
It's certainly an imperfect setup, but regional pricing seems an interesting challenge to make work without relying on external investment.
Re: Unlimited Kagi searches for $10 per month
#260I like the statement they made on their jobs page: Core Front-end Team Passion for creating delightful and swift user interfaces. Proficiency in HTML, CSS, and _an understanding that JavaScript can be used sparingly to enhance, not create, product experiences._ Ability to prototype rapidly. Fun fact: At Kagi, we prioritize speed, to the point where *all functionalities of Kagi Search (except Stripe checkout and Maps)…
In my opinion, in not using JavaScript they are missing out on a really nice DX. This is the kind of app that could be highly optimized _despite_ using React or something similar. Knee-capping your hiring to Make A Point (tm) is silly.
"Highly optimised" depends what you're optimising for.