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I Lost Faith in Kagi

d-shoot.net

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Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#11

Post by jsheard »

bruxis wrote: post #3

The era of having startup founders both immediately accessible on social platforms (X/Twitter, Discord, etc.) and overly willing to share their opinions is a messy one. It's hard enough in a small startup to prevent CEO "commentary-driven-development" , let alone have their random thoughts driving investment insight and user acquisition/attrition.

Even without seeing Vlads comments it was already disheartening to see them investing in AI features of questionable utility rather than focusing on the core search product. Trying to make a new search engine is already a difficult enough task without spreading themselves even thinner, and diluting the value of the subscription for those who just want search because they only offer unlimited searches in conjunction with unlimited access to the AI tools.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#13

Post by infecto »

jsheard wrote: post #11
bruxis wrote: post #3

The era of having startup founders both immediately accessible on social platforms (X/Twitter, Discord, etc.) and overly willing to share their opinions is a messy one. It's hard enough in a small startup to prevent CEO "commentary-driven-development" , let alone have their random thoughts driving investment insight and user acquisition/attrition.

Even without seeing Vlads comments it was already disheartening to see them investing in AI features of questionable utility rather than focusing on the core search product. Trying to make a new search engine is already a difficult enough task without spreading themselves even thinner, and diluting the value of the subscription for those who just want search because they only offer unlimited searches in conjunction w…

To me the Orion endeavor was much more concerning. I don't understand how you can sustain a company of a handful of people and work on search, ai, ai+search, orion and making tshirts.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#14

Post by arghwhat »

Aaand, trying to delete your account you get:

    Error: Server Error
    The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request.
    
    Please try again in 30 seconds.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#16

Post by microtonal »

arghwhat wrote: post #7

Vlad's interpretation of GDPR is both horribly wrong and very concerning. Personally Identifiable Information includes anything that can be used to uncover a person's identity. An email address is PII, as it can be used to identify which person their data relates to - and they do have data, at the very least a user account and settings but likely also logs. Full names, phone numbers or IP addresses are also PII - if…

IANAL, but even UUIDs and hashes of user names can fall under the EU, when there is a future possibility of linking it to a user (e.g. through behavior). See e.g. https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/86570/in-gdpr-terms-...

To determine whether a natural person is identifiable, account should be taken of all the means reasonably likely to be used, such as singling out, either by the controller or by another person to identify the natural person directly or indirectly.

https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-26/

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#17

Post by smcleod »

Tomte wrote: post #4

Subsequently: https://hackers.town/@lori/112255132348604770

Sounds like Vlad did a pretty sane, human thing reaching out and offering to discuss.

The authors replies seem pretty rude (or at least somewhat aggressive / dismissive). Kagi is Vlads baby and I could imagine he would care and try to explain when he thinks someone has the wrong idea. However to the author - it’s just another service he doesn’t use anymore.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#18

Post by fn-mote »

Tomte wrote: post #4

Subsequently: https://hackers.town/@lori/112255132348604770

^ The parent link leads to an email chain between the CEO and the blogger in which the blogger says "go away I do not want to talk to you" several times and receives a chain of emails back. Text version:

https://d-shoot.net/files/kagiemails.txt

Read them yourself, but to me they look like the emails of a persistent salesman. They were remarkable only in that they provide more excuses than concrete responses.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#19

Post by Sakos »

infecto wrote: post #8

I still pay for Kagi for its search but this has kind of been the problem from the beginning with their org. - Search has been a breath of fresh air, I wish they dedicated more time to it. - Orion...is ok? I use it off and on and it is fine but would rather have better search. The premise of the browser is nice but it feels like this could probably be a whole separate company or a purely open source endeavor. It has…

As a "hard-core" Kagi user:

1) I legit can't fathom going back to Google or any other search engine. I don't know what I'll do if they go under.

2) Investing in integrating AI into their search is absolutely vital and I like a lot of what they're doing there

3) Everything else, including the insanity of the t-shirts thing, is a complete waste of time and money. I don't understand what their strategy is if it isn't to set money on fire.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#20

Post by vaughnegut »

Tomte wrote: post #4

Subsequently: https://hackers.town/@lori/112255132348604770

Honestly what he says makes sense in his "rebuttal", except for the part where he continues emailing after being told to stop.

I actually stumbled across the AI stuff being turned off by default yesterday when I got curious and was poking around the feature request forum. It was explicitly because a lot of people hate it for moral/ethical reasons. A lot of the comments in the replies are specifically about the AI stuff in spite of it being disabled by default.

Most of this seems fine for a startup?

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