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I Lost Faith in Kagi

d-shoot.net

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Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#91

Post by fridek »

fn-mote wrote: post #18
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.

I find this quote funny and on some another level of disconnect about what they are competing with:

> Not even Google ever printed 20k tshirts to give away for free.

For a couple of my university years I had nothing but free Google t-shirts. They were throwing so much of this crap around that my closet was halfway to 20k. I only lamented they never gave away Google trousers or briefs.

They have a fair shot at competing with Google on quality of search and they should focus on that. If they think they can complete on AI, email or swag - good luck, and I hope you have a good money printer.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#92

Post by darrmit »

I did pay briefly for Kagi, but ultimately just didn't see the benefit over DDG. Google seems to be too far gone to be useful, but DDG still consistently finds what I need. Other than that, the main issue I have with Kagi from a business perspective is it will always be extremely niche. Even among "tech" people, the idea of paying for a search engine will always be a single digit percentage of the overall market.

I view Fastmail in a similar manner, but the difference with them is they have a real business market for those wanting an alternative to Google or Microsoft.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#93

Post by WA »

eviks wrote: post #58
WA wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vlad is not discussing, he is lecturing. The author of the blog post seems right. Vlad defends his position "lol email is not PII" repeatedly, despite being obviously and completely wrong. He has no understanding that it doesn't matter that a user could enter fake information. His business collects email addresses, which is a process. Under GDPR, this process must be documented, users must be given their data on requ…

he explicitly said in his email that "Personal emails are PII.", so how is that a defence of his previous position?

I re-read again. You are right, he says "personal emails are PII" in this email. In the original post however he dismisses the whole GDPR data request process as "we don't need this, because you can provide fake data".

Point is: if the business requests an email address, many people will provide their real email adress and your business needs to document this process under GDPR. I just checked. The signup form doesn't say "please give a FAKE email address", it just says "email address".

If a user provides a real email address, Kagi must respond to GDPR Art. 15 requests by providing...that same email adress. Might sound silly, but usually, there is other data associated with this. Usually, at least the timestamp of the signup. If a business is really GDPR compliant, it will offer a download option for stuff like user settings and so on.

Or, if the user signed up and later deleted the account, his email should explicitly NOT show up when asking for personal data.

See, it is about documenting the process, whether the outcome is "here is your email address you just asked for" or "we don't have any data on you". And Vlad says that this process is irrelevant for Kagi, while it is not.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#95

Post by mr_machine »

I'm a subscriber simply because their search is far better than any available alternative. That's the primary thing I want from them and so far they're delivering it at a cost I consider fair.

Their other projects are not interesting or useful to me, but so far I can simply ignore them. Yes, on some level I wish they'd focus and quit wasting money and energy on things I don't care about, but that's really not my affair.

The one growing reservation I have is with regard to Vlad's/Kagi's actual, boots-on-the-ground approach to privacy. Kagi necessarily has the ability to know more about me than almost any other company. I want to see them demonstrate strong and unwavering commitment to respecting and protecting my privacy - through policy, technology, and careful and continuous vetting of partners. Expressed disinterest in collecting or capitalizing on my data is not enough, and seeing Vlad's communications in which he casually shrugs or responsibility-shifts to a third-party heightens my concern.

For now, I remain a customer - but a wary one. I've stopped actively recommending Kagi personally and professionally because as a privacy advocate, it increasingly feels irresponsible to do so.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#96

Post by binarymax »

I don’t have the full story on the t-shirts, but isn’t this a typical “we want to give tshirts to our supporters” without realizing that it’s crazy expensive and complicated? They probably didn’t intend to spend 1/3 of their round on tshirts, but this is pretty much a microfunding cliche at this point. Kickstarters often reel at their tshirt promise after the fact, and I believe there’s even a YC company or two that started just to solve the problem of sending supporters their promised swag.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#97

Post by rsynnott »

> For example, he has stated before that he thinks 3 star reviews on products are "by definition" unbiased, because they must include good and bad points.

... What?

Has this person ever visited a review site? I mean, it varies fairly dramatically, and there are some niches where 3/5, 5/10 etc has a fairly defined meaning (for instance, for TV reviewers it means "meh", for gadget reviewers it means "this will catch fire as soon as you plug it in"), but really, I mean, what?

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#98

Post by mbStavola »

yreg wrote: post #84
tomoyoirl wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do they care how many employees Kagi has or how much they spend on t-shirts. Spending a third of your round on t-shirt manufacturing equipment is possibly not the best sign of the focused leadership that will bring your company success in a difficult market.

True, but what do I as a customer care? It's not like I'm building some business on their APIs or anything. If they go down, I will switch to another search engine… no need to do so preemptively from my PoV.

Because "going down" doesn't necessarily mean _shutting_ down-- it could be a sale as well. Considering the stated attitude towards privacy, that should worry you if privacy is your concern.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#99

Post by Semaphor »

nebulous1 wrote: post #37
smcleod wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So does the author. But then I also don’t care about the author and don’t pay them for my search engine :/
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