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I Lost Faith in Kagi

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Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#171

Post by strogonoff »

I’m using Orion and I pay for Kagi. Orion works great (despite a few glitches I had run into over year or two, miles ahead of competition).

Like others, I think that they had to raise money is a worrying signal they are not sustaining themselves. However, that’s only a signal.

I may not think the CEO is a particularly nice guy (though he was not too pleasant when responding to tickets, which yes he apparently does himself (unless it’s a shared account?), he was not rude either), but realistically can I demand that from him? Push comes to shove, can’t really claim I’m extremely nice either, and I have achieved less.

Regarding the use of ML or Kagi being originally an AI company, I don’t think it necessarily condemns the project.

Kagi Email drama seems ridiculous, but is very new to me.

Unless there are some further bad revelations about the company or the CEO, I will reserve my judgement for now…

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#172

Post by internetter »

keiferski wrote: post #87

I am increasingly convinced that the successor/replacement to Google will not be a more clever, AI-powered search engine, but a hyper-curated collection of links, selected by people who understand what good content is. Sort of like Yahoo in the pre-Google days. I think this is only going to become more apparent once AI-generated content takes over the web.

I’m working on a pinboard competitor (that is, essentially, just reviving development of it)

One thing I want to look into is ranking algorithms based on individual engagement. So, if you save lots of stories from a site, it ranks higher. If lots of people save stories from a site, it also ranks higher, ect

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#173

Post by Terretta »

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #122
yreg wrote: post #29

I've read the first third of the article and I didn't get what's the author's problem with Kagi. What do they care how many employees Kagi has or how much they spend on t-shirts. Then I scrolled through the rest of it and read the very last screenshot. That one looks pretty bad. > people who really need anonymity are very rare. probably less than a 100 in the entire world. definitely not typical Kagi users > unless t…

> unless they are criminals, in which case we don't care they don't have full anonymity (nor we want them as customers) Christians can be labeled criminals in China. Young women try to get a 1st trimester abortion in Texas. What the hell is he talking about? Anyone with even a basic understanding of human liberty and dignity knows anonymity and free speech are bedrocks. Especially disturbing coming from someone tryin…

I have been a proponent of kagi from near inception, and have interacted with Vlad by email as well as Discord, including getting change/feature made. The core search product was (for the longest time*) a breath of fresh air, as were these interactions**.

That "criminals" comment flipped my advocacy off like a light switch, for all the reasons described here in this thread. Perhaps it will get walked back.

* Lately, the results seem more Bing-like, and I've even had to !g things for the first time in a year to find a non-spam result. The core product has to be 10x for people to advocate and people to switch, not just more of the same or slightly better.

** Although, I couldn't convince him to make a team plan that would effectively let me pay full price (pro or ultimate) per employee for everyone registering from a domain. I cannot fathom why he wouldn't let a company pay him for double or triple digit employees, it's free money. Plus, those employees that use it for free at the office, will get frustrated at home, and buy the family option and tell their friends... Refusing to let me cover my employee base is a weird flex for someone still counting subscribers trying to get to 25,000.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#174

Post by stzsch »

My perspective as a subscriber for ~6 months:

Search just works, 90%+ of my searches are on kagi. Much better than google, bing, ddg, etc. Worth the $10.

I do use fastgpt and the summarizer sometimes. As with any of these AI tools, you have to get a feel for what suits it and when to use it.

The unbiased review idea _sounds like_ it would be ultimately fruitless as the requirements get philosophical, but it may very well lead to more useful tools in the process.

The GDPR perspective is unfortunate. I'm willing to wait and see if they eventually accept it.

Overall, I like their focus on user experience, customization, fast and light websites, and search quality. Sure it might not as objective as it's portrayed, but it is giving me great tools _today_.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#175

Post by carlosjobim »

marcinzm wrote: post #10

I wonder if the t-shirts were basically a way to siphon some investor money directly into their own pockets. Or if someone just thought they can do it cheaper and then ran into sunk cost fallacy.

Yes, of course they created a consumer product that outperforms the main product of the third largest company in the world just as a measure to cheat investors out of a couple of hundred thousand. That's why I won't buy Apple products either, because I'm sure all these iPhones and Macbooks are just a tricky plan to build up investor confidence so that they can cheat them out of money in the future.

Useless snark aside, if the Kagi team wanted more "money directly into their own pockets" they could just raise their salaries. If their product is comparable to Google their salaries could be as well.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#176

Post by mwrd »

ceejayoz wrote: post #132
carlosjobim wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An e-mail by itself is not PII, it has to be connected to other personal data. When companies use Stripe for payments, those other personal data are cared for by Stripe. There are people who argue that just the name of a person is PII and they are wrong.

> There are people who argue that just the name of a person is PII and they are wrong. It's very easy for a name to be PII. I'm quite certain mine is unique, due to hyphenating when I got married.

There is no test under GDPR for personal data that can identify an individual to have to identify a single unique individual to be in scope of the legislation, just that the personal data can be used to identify _an_ individual. Two people living at the same address with the same name sharing the same telephone doesn't suddenly make all that personal data fall out of scope.

Whilst the response from OP is so obviously wrong and confusing that it's likely to be a troll and not worth engaging with, it's worth clarifying to anyone reading this thread that email addresses most certainly do qualify as personal data under GDPR. GDPR very clearly states what personal data is (see https://gdpr.eu/eu-gdpr-personal-data/ and https://gdpr-info.eu/issues/personal-data/) and that storing or processing of this data necessitates the need to comply with the requirements of the GDPR (particularly the rights detailed under https://gdpr-info.eu/chapter-3/).

For the purposes of this conversation, an email address is personal data, operating in the EU (and additionally, by way of carried-over legislation, the UK) means complying with the GDPR, and therefore Kagi need to provide mechanisms by which people covered by the legislation can enforce the rights afforded them within it.

(GDPR also doesn't use the term "PII", merely just "personal data" and goes on to detail what this means in terms of identification, which might add to the confusion in OPs original message).

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#177

Post by drcongo »

catapart wrote: post #156
edude03 wrote: post #115

(this articles formatting was super hard to read, I love the web 1.0 "just get it out there" vibe but man I wish CSS had a good "reasonable default" for lots of text) I'm a huge fan of kagi and have been paying for it for as long as paying for it has been possible - that said, I think the author is spot on about the long term viability of the project considering their limited funding, limited employees, very wide (ye…

FWIW, my assumption here is that people who publish like this page are expecting users to use a "reader view" and they're trying not to introduce any styles at all, so as not to conflict with the styles that the reader view will apply. Otherwise, ' "reasonable default" for lots of text ' is something that browsers provide, using the "system" fonts. Applying a font-family to the entire html or body tags will do the jo…

Using reader view would discard all CSS anyway though right?

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#178

Post by Kuinox »

carlosjobim wrote: post #54
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…

An e-mail by itself is not PII, it has to be connected to other personal data. When companies use Stripe for payments, those other personal data are cared for by Stripe. There are people who argue that just the name of a person is PII and they are wrong.

> There are people who argue that just the name of a person is PII and they are wrong.

> ‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, [...]

https://gdpr.eu/article-4-definitions/

A name is PII, as stated by the definitions in the GDPR.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#179

Post by carlosjobim »

ceejayoz wrote: post #132
carlosjobim wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An e-mail by itself is not PII, it has to be connected to other personal data. When companies use Stripe for payments, those other personal data are cared for by Stripe. There are people who argue that just the name of a person is PII and they are wrong.

> There are people who argue that just the name of a person is PII and they are wrong. It's very easy for a name to be PII. I'm quite certain mine is unique, due to hyphenating when I got married.

Your name by itself and not connected to anything else, is not PII. But there are many people who argue that.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#180

Post by nunez »

I use Kagi heavily. I don't make time to follow their Discord but have submitted some bugs to their feedback forum. I also paid for Kagi+ because Orion is a cool project and I want very badly for it to replace Safari as my main line browser.

Honestly, this gave me the impression that Kagi is a move fast and break shit kind of company, with Vlad as a benevolent dictator type. Finances are often (I think) a disaster at these kinds of companies that gets fixed later. The t-shirt thing is sus but those shirts look really cool and I might buy one. Vlad being flippant about getting sold is better than lying about "nothing will change; we will find a buyer that agrees with our values" while looking for the highest bidder, values be damned. The email thing makes sense technically (they're basically trying to be a Google alternative) and seems like too much, but, hey, it's Vlad's money (I believe he bootstrapped this? If so, the investments they got were probably more donations than investments) and if the devs want to do it, more power to them!

Vlad is "my way or the highway" unless you convince him that the highway is actually better. I've seen this happen with many feature requests, like them improving WebAuthN support or integrating support for Apple's iCloud Keychain extension, both in the Orion browser.

Also, while Kagi seems to have pivoted from an AI answering service to search, it seems like a really logical pivot and comments like this:

> 1 AI should be used to the extent that it enhances our humanity, not diminish it (AI should be used to support users, not replace them)

give me the impression that they're at least trying to be responsible with this tech.

Everything in this article is mildly concerning, but the alternative (going back to Google Search and embracing a mono-browser future) is so much worse. I don't regret supporting their mission at this time.

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