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I Lost Faith in Kagi

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Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#391

Post by fckgw »

dotnet00 wrote: post #381
nebulous1 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This feels very similar to the trope on X, where someone makes an inflammatory or stupid comment, people angrily respond calling them stupid, and the original person then claims they're being harassed/were just joking, and ultimately neither side actually communicates. The people who like the original poster continue on believing that they were being harassed, and people who thought they were being stupid continue on…

Vlad is justified to reach out and try to start a conversation but when the author says no, you drop it. That didn't happen here and it's a bad look.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#392

Post by elektor »

brewdad wrote: post #362
AuthError wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do they have a decent subscriber base? i thought it was still very niche

Somewhere between 20,000 (number of t-shirts sent out) and 50,000 (their stated next target). Not too bad for a startup but a drop in the proverbial ocean of search.

They have a live tracker of subscribers, 25,785 at time of posting comment.

https://kagi.com/stats

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#393

Post by rjbwork »

claytongulick wrote: post #342
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…

I'm a deep technical nerd, but I approach Kagi from a basic user perspective. Things I love and can't live without: - When I search for something, I don't have to deal with weeks of whatever I searched for coming up in ads on every web page I visit. - I don't feel like "the man" is snooping on me in some sort of weird dark social credit score thing. (I literally got a call from Google once offering me a job based on…

Personally I love the AI tools. The summary tool is what got me converted from the trial to a paying user.

Quality is there for the most part, IME, but I definitely agree that their local features need a LOT of work.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#394

Post by catapart »

sianemo wrote: post #390
catapart wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment, taken as a response to the parent or just as general advice about life, is so entirely bereft of anything objectionable, and is so intrinsically reasonable that its status as 'downvoted' (assumed from the grey text color) is a blemish on HN's commentariat. Put more simply: it takes a weird, broken logic to find fault in the idea that a person who won't stop emailing you, after being told to, isn't "comb…

The further responses from Vlad may be ill advised, and maybe he should've realized those emails were going to be unproductive, but they aren't combative. The email Lori sends explicitly asking him to stop emailing is then followed up with some last-wordism "for the record" nonsense. Only on the extremely online internet do people consider someone the aggrieved party after they write a screed against a product or bus…

thank you for this example.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#395

Post by mvdtnz »

AuthError wrote: post #340
shepherdjerred wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep going! Kagi is great. Years ago nobody thought Google could be challenged and that nobody would pay for search, yet here you are.

do they have a decent subscriber base? i thought it was still very niche

Why don't you read the post you're commenting on? The answer is in there.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#396

Post by catapart »

gspencley wrote: post #384
swatcoder wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a forum where people respond well to practical explanations from thoughtful founders. I don't know if the OP got what they needed from this reply, but I assume I'm not alone in being impressed by the humility and candor of the response and developed much greater affinity for Kagi from some of the specifics of what were said. I want more companies to have communicative, principled management that invites a sus…

Interesting take. It is valid and don't take my alternative interpretation as suggesting otherwise. I owned a business for 18 years. For 15 of those years it was my primary source of income. I valued feedback, tried my hardest to solicit as much of it as possible, and always took it to heart (though I had to always try and glean statistics from the sum of all feedback so that I was never spending resources on minorit…

You sound like a very good businessman, and a reasonably astute interrogator of user feedback. I wish there were more businesses with people having those traits at the helm!

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#397

Post by cmrdporcupine »

knoebber wrote: post #333

Fair criticisms, but at the end of the day, Kagi offers a better search experience then all the alternatives for a fair price, so I pay for it. I don't really need to have 'faith' in it, though I do hope it sticks around. Also, can't wait to get my tshirt! (closed beta user here)

Exactly this, it's a product, not a religion. I like that it exists. I pay for it. It feels worth it to me. Certainly more useful to me than the Netflix sub I had hanging around forever but barely used.

I don't get why random punditry is of any relevance here, or why Vlad felt the need to respond. He needs a PR person, I think

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#398

Post by theturtletalks »

gspencley wrote: post #384
swatcoder wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a forum where people respond well to practical explanations from thoughtful founders. I don't know if the OP got what they needed from this reply, but I assume I'm not alone in being impressed by the humility and candor of the response and developed much greater affinity for Kagi from some of the specifics of what were said. I want more companies to have communicative, principled management that invites a sus…

Interesting take. It is valid and don't take my alternative interpretation as suggesting otherwise. I owned a business for 18 years. For 15 of those years it was my primary source of income. I valued feedback, tried my hardest to solicit as much of it as possible, and always took it to heart (though I had to always try and glean statistics from the sum of all feedback so that I was never spending resources on minorit…

I get OP's take, but freediver is essentially saying that Orion and their other ventures are a part of the vision. To OP and others, it may seem like a side-mission or a waste of resources, but I trust the guy bootstrapping the company with his own money.

Hell, Orion is the first Webkit browser where FireFox and Chrome plug-ins work on iOS. If may seem like a misstep, but I see it as calculated. If Kagi search hopes to ever take on Google and Chrome, they need their own champion.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#399

Post by ab_io »

I just cancelled my Kagi subscription over the weekend. Some of the ideas in the article resonate (the dev team seems spread way too thin) but I also decided that the main product just wasn't distinct enough. The lens and quick answers features were nice, but otherwise the search results were not that different from Google's -- Having just switched back, I haven't noticed a significant difference.

I also think this product might be a bit too late. GPT4 has been out for over a year now, and it's changed how I look for answers. I tried FastGPT but like the author I found it lacking. As it stands, Perplexity feels more like the future of search than Kagi.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#400

Post by Kuinox »

carlosjobim wrote: post #315
ceejayoz wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name" What is there to misunderstand?

If I write a name on a piece of paper here on my desk, I have not violated GDPR. If the radio commentator speaks the name of the soccer player who made a pass, he has not violated GDPR. But there are people who argue that names by themselves (without reference to anything else) are protected personal identification data. Which they clearly are not.

Thank you for demonstrating you have no idea what the GDPR is.
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