Yikes. I'm happy to stay away from Kagi, now. I find that platform strategy and that founder's attitude to be hideous, so I appreciate you bringing that to light.
I Lost Faith in Kagi
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Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi
#32I personally haven’t lost faith, because search is still the best out there. I’m really happy with it, no complaints and I’m not planning on cancelling.
Speaking about their whole business, I think three things left me a negative impression:
- the tshirts were really unnecessary. I didn’t understand that. I am not sure the world needed more trash being produced and for sure it was not a good use of their money.
- I think AI as a tool has a place in their offering (Quick Answer, Summarizer). I don’t think the Assistant stuff makes sense for a search engine.
- the apparent lack of care for privacy that appears in the quotes in the blog posts are not good and I hope Vlad changes his mind and addresses that properly. Everyone needs privacy. Moreover, GDPR is no joke and it should be followed properly.
Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi
#33Maybe they needed a German company to receive money from the BND for their user data without the US knowing :-D
But in all seriousness, I’ve been a subscriber ever since they started and I’m an ultimate subscriber still, and I’d be sad if they went bankrupt due to mismanagement of the funds.
Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi
#34I don't find anything outlined in the post particularly bad, but what does bother me is that it seems like Kagi's founder cares a lot about what people think on Discord. Like the author said, most people never touch it and don't know or care what is said on there. If you want to engage with people, why not do it in a more open space? The closed nature of Discord chats means the only way to reference them is through s…
They do also have a feedback forum that Vlad is very active on: https://kagifeedback.org
Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi
#35I stopped reading once I realized it was just a rant about their business. Why would I care? Their search is better, it's worth what I pay, if it stops being worth the money I'll stop paying. I could care less how their business is run. If I was investing I might look closer, until then, the maximum I have at risk is the $100 or so it costs a year, which I'm comfortable with. Did I miss something more damning later in the article?
Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi
#36Aaand, 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.
Yikes.
Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi
#37Subsequently: 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.
You can make that argument for initial approach, but it falls flat on its face after the author told Vlad that they didn't want to communicate with them and Vlad responded with a lecture.
Vlad comes off as fairly unhinged here.
Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi
#38I 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…
Investing in better search is absolutely vital, and AI may be the right tool there, but I don't care about the AI. I pay Kagi to be a better search and informational retrieval tool, not to do AI.
Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi
#39This is disheartening to hear... Especially wrt. AI I was hoping for them to use it to classify the web and not aiming for yet another GPT frontend. Or in general developing tools that are a match for the state of the information space that exists today.
And whatever the heck is going on with all the other stuff. There's no way one should stretch oneself this thin.
Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi
#40(1) I helped somebody start a hobby shop years ago, he was having trouble getting the bank loans to start it and I asked him if he’d consider raising equity, the next day he asked if I was serious, I told him I would put something in if he found some other investors and that was what happened. He was successful about building a community around the store but not successful at the paperwork so it turned out we had not…
> (2) If you are working on search in 2024 and you are serious you’re going to be using A.I.
Pretty sure Marginalia doesn't use AI and to the best of my knowledge Viktor hasn't written about plans to do so. But maybe he's not serious because it sure seems like he's having fun!