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I Lost Faith in Kagi

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Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#551

Post by Aeolun »

agos wrote: post #438
eddyzh wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your response! Honestly I get the T-shirt part this way. You got to Doo crazy stuff as a start-up. I also get that you try ai stuff. As long as you keep up de search. However what scares me is the apparent lack of knowledge about privacy, gdpr and what is PII in a product that, to me, is all about privacy. Have one person in the company be an expert in privacy and GDPR etc and use their insights, since it…

I got the same impression - the lack of understanding of the basics of GDPR makes them look as amateurs, not professionals trying to raise the bar for privacy. I was considering using Kagi, but this is a massive turn off. They'll likely discover that GDPR is not that optional as soon as a customer (or a competitor with a grudge!) reports them to their relevant national privacy/personal data protection authority, afte…

It’s very simple to just not have all that much PII or customer data. At that point you can more or less ignore GDRP.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#552

Post by Aeolun »

dustincoates wrote: post #209
Zambyte wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish they dedicated more time to it. What changes you have in mind to search functionality? I feel like the core search is rock solid as is, but they address search quality reports on their feedback forums all the time. To me, the AI features (and specifically how they are only used when you opt in per query) are enhancing search, and the time they have been allocating to those features has continuously improved…

I love Kagi, I'm an early paying subscriber, but I think the quality of their results is overstated. Anytime you get past result #5 or so, the results just get _weird_. If you have to do deep research on something, you'll often get pages that seemingly have nothing to do with the query, or these class of pages that seem to be poor answers to common queries aggregated together.

Ok, maybe it’s not that the quality of Kagi results is so high, it’s more that the quality of Google results is so poor. Just not having to deal with all the spam is a winner to me.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#554

Post by Aeolun »

lolinder wrote: post #407
erickhill wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't stand the randomness of how posts seem to be getting flagged more and more on HN. Seems like if a post is flagged and killed a reason should be given somewhere on the page by the flagger. Educate us on why our discussions should be off-limits, please. It would also be interesting to see if certain topics are always flagged by the same individuals and patterns emerge.

FWIW, this one got unflagged pretty quickly. I didn't flag it, but I came close just because the tone of the piece is so sensational and needlessly aggressive. I left it put because it's the first negative Kagi piece I've seen and I didn't want to silence an alternative perspective, but the quality was definitely below what I hope to see on the front page.

It’s a pretty good thing to discuss though?

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#555

Post by ibash »

thisisjasononhn wrote: post #223
iowahansen wrote: post #23

Happy Kagi user here. I'm gladly paying $25 per month because of all their AI features, which work well for me overall. Yes, I could set up API keys on OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Mistral and get a similar experience for less, but I prefer the convenience of their interface and have clean search results bundled into the experience. I will continue to recommend them and hope that T-Shirt becomes available soon.

Or you could spend $25 a month on a dedicated server and run SearxNG or Yacy? Good lord what an excessive amount of money that is to search the web ...

I tried searxng. Sucked.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#556

Post by Aeolun »

sleepybrett wrote: post #445
drunkan wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone say "please don't email me about this anymore" after writing a hit piece on someone and there company without giving them an opportunity to respond they are being provocative, goading and a troll.

Lori isn't writing a 'hit peice' she is writing a short post that is in effect a review of the service and the company and the founder. If the founder wants to respond they can write a respectful blog post and put it on the fucking homepage. They don't have a right to harangue the author via email.

I mean, your email is kind of an open box that people can stuff letters into. If you don’t like the letters from someone you can rip them up unopened (send to trash).

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#557

Post by Aeolun »

sleepybrett wrote: post #447
jlund-molfese wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, or if you're being polite, or even short in a reasonable way "I'd rather not discuss this privately," that is fine. Lori's emails are deliberately designed to goad Vlad into replying, just to act indignant when he does.

> "Thanks for reaching out, but no, I would not. I am not interested in being cornered into a call by the owner of a business because I made a blog post about it." This is not goading, this is telling someone to fuck off into the sun. If he wants to respond he can respond on his product with a blog post. His audience already dwarfs hers anyways, he Streisand-effect'ed himself because he's clearly got some narcissism…

Dunno, I don’t think I’m a narcissist but I get unreasonably pissed off about people talking nonsense without giving me a chance to respond as well.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#558

Post by keiferski »

abenga wrote: post #498
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.

This assumes the breadth of "things I will ever want to search in the future" is contained in whatever these "people" consider to be useful knowledge. Should we create such a group and have them thoughtfully consider every present and past field of knowledge, language, place on earth, political/religious viewpoint, and so on.

Well I imagine that searches probably follow a Pareto 80/20 rule to some extent. In other words, 80% of searches are on 20% of total topics. So the hypothetical group would focus on those high volume search topics first.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#559

Post by jjtheblunt »

corytheboyd wrote: post #514
jjtheblunt wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use it in my iphone with no trickery. Perhaps it’s easiest to use Orion…i’ve found it very nice.

Asking me to change web browsers is insane, so off the table. That leaves going to kagi.com in my browser to then search, but nobody does that. I am opening the web browser, and using the address bar to search, and I want that experience to be good. To have that flow work with kagi you have to jump through some pretty crazy hoops. The point where I unsubscribed for good was when the crazy hoops stopped working. I get…

Except for your first two sentences, you’re describing how I use Orion on iOS. I haven’t tried any macos version, randomly.

(Agreed about manually going to kagi.com not happening, etc.)

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#560

Post by Zuiii »

garciansmith wrote: post #379
mr_machine wrote: post #95

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 affa…

I've been curious about Kagi but the idea of running all my searches through one company while logged in worries me. Yes, I realize most people do that with Google and could care less, but I do. For me to try Kagi I'd need a much firmer commitment to user privacy, not the wishy-washy hand-waving portrayed here.

This is my primary concern with Kagi.

The founder posted comments on hn assuring that they take privacy seriously, and I believe him, but most commercial companies (including the big ones like Microsoft) also claimed to take privacy seriously. Look at what they are doing right now: Blatant violations and even more blatant lies.

Search is a deeply personal activity. It can reveal far more information about the user than financial statements, health records, privileged attorney information, or library reading lists. Kagi therefore must _at least_ meet the same sanctity, privilege, and protection standards afforded to those parts of life. At present, Kagi does not meet these standards through technical means, and governing laws certainly fall short of compelling Kagi to meet either.

So while I appreciate what Kagi is trying to do and wish them success, I cannot see myself using it in its current form. Local (private) LLMs and fact checking through search engines that aren't tied to my PII simply provide a superior experience. At present, it's simply impossible for people like me who want better search and are willing to pay for it to become customers of Kagi. I find that to be a real shame :(

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