Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I Lost Faith in Kagi

d-shoot.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 639 posts

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#231

Post by AlexandrB »

> And he is very, very much the type that believes "not everything is political" and "we don't get into politics".

Seems like a feature, not a bug. The only politics I care about from my tech products is whether they will collect/sell my personal data or not. Too many tech companies use a veneer of support for various political causes to take attention away from their own misdeeds. At this point it's a red flag when a company talks more about their politics than about their product.

Thus the quotes at the end are quite bad:

> people who really need anonymity are very rare. probably less than a 100 in the entire world. definitely not typical hKagi users (edited)

> unless they are criminals, in which case we don't care they don't have full anonymity (nor we want them as customers)

Women seeking abortions in the US weren't criminals two years ago and now, in some places, they are. I don't think he's thought about this position very carefully.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#232

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#233

Post by jacekm »

Dayshine wrote: post #105
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…

Re the t-shirts: last time I checked the were private equity not VC and priced their product for profitability not growth. Would you be upset if they had just donated that excess to charity?

> Would you be upset if they had just donated that excess to charity?

Yes.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#234

Post by JohnFen »

mbStavola wrote: post #98
yreg wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All search engines are problematic in terms of privacy.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#235

Post by theothermelissa »

freediver wrote: post #199
paradite wrote: post #45

The real lesson here is that as a founder, don't spend too much time discussing with your users on discord. Gathering feedback good. But getting involved in philosophical discussion or how to run the company looks like a bad idea.

Kagi founder here. I am probably 'guilty' of reading and responding to every comment on discord, our feedback forum and I still respond to support tickets. This does invite trouble but interacting with users of the product I am building is also the only way I know how to do it and is keeping me sane. Not to mention it helps build a great product, as users probably 'built' half of it with feedback. I never thought tha…

I think it's a matter of scale. The principles and instincts that guide us in small-group conversations don't always translate well in large groups -- especially in conversations with an imbalance of emotional investment in the conversation. As the founder, you have a lot more riding on every exchange than any user does (even ardent, investing users). And as your user base grows, both the number of those interactions and their visibility and potential impact on your company is growing. So they're increasing in both number and stakes.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#236

Post by paradite »

freediver wrote: post #199
paradite wrote: post #45

The real lesson here is that as a founder, don't spend too much time discussing with your users on discord. Gathering feedback good. But getting involved in philosophical discussion or how to run the company looks like a bad idea.

Kagi founder here. I am probably 'guilty' of reading and responding to every comment on discord, our feedback forum and I still respond to support tickets. This does invite trouble but interacting with users of the product I am building is also the only way I know how to do it and is keeping me sane. Not to mention it helps build a great product, as users probably 'built' half of it with feedback. I never thought tha…

Sometimes they also drive you insane, especially if you are over-attached to them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33455853

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#237

Post by danpalmer »

emushack wrote: post #227

I really don't understand why people are so upset about the T-shirts. Like in the grand scheme of things, who cares? If I invested money (I didn't) in Kagi, I would expect some of that money to be spent on marketing. Marketers often do experiments, some of which go well, and others that don't. Only time tells. This take feels more like being upset about one individual's (Vlad) personal opinions about privacy and poli…

Sending t-shirts to existing users is unlikely to be an effective marketing strategy to grow/maintain the business. The way they did it was also inefficient and high-risk. It may reduce churn, but with 20k users there's a very low cap on how good a churn reduction can be vs bringing in new users.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#238

Post by rchaud »

> Like most search now Kagi has chosen to include Instant Answers that are AI generated, which means they're often wrong, as well as a "Universal Summarizer" tool, that again is more of the same old AI bullshit.

I started turning away from Google when they implemented this a few years ago, because the "answers" they selected always came from bullshit sites. Looking up Excel formulas for example, you're more likely to see a lightly disguised sales pitch page from an Excel barnacle company like AbleBits or ExtendOffice than the many forum posts and tutorial blogs that would actually answer my question.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#239

Post by internetter »

nottorp wrote: post #196
internetter wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And... when the bots come and "engage", what will you do?

1. Voting rings are one of the easiest types of spam to detect. Of course, the bigger the service the better the bots, but that problem specifically is a later issue

2. Zero tolerance to bots

3. The service is not free

4. Individuals have very little impact on the rankings of other users, so you need to pay for a lot of bots

I believe that the true problem with bots on, say, twitter, is that they have perverse incentives to 'boost engagement' and whatever by allowing the bots to run rampant.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#240

Post by HWR_14 »

laborcontract wrote: post #128
yreg wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It you want to know when Evernote went downhill, it’s precisely the moment they started selling backpacks.

Every tech company I've ever seen has had free t-shirts to give out at some point. While I don't think it was a smart use of limited funds, it's certainly not a major pivot to physical products like Evernote.
Post reply on HN