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

Try Switching to Kagi

daringfireball.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 493 posts

Re: Try Switching to Kagi

#171

Post by waiwai933 »

I did a free 30 day Kagi trial a month ago, and while I'm not sure I'm convinced the search results are better, they're definitely not worse. I've only fallen back to Google thrice, and in every case, Google didn't find anything useful either.

That said, the most astonishing thing was that I apparently do 100 searches a day, so 3k a month... I'm a bit sad that Kagi doesn't offer opt-in search history because I want to know what it is I'm searching for! (it's across three devices so looking at browser history is just above the threshold of how much effort I want to put in)

Re: Try Switching to Kagi

#172

Post by seth_at_kagi »

deng wrote: post #166
jrmg wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watch out - I got the email offering a new 30 day free trial, and at the end of the month they did nothing to inform me and started charging the credit card they apparently still had on file from when I subscribed for a month or two a few years ago. I guess with other companies I would’ve expected something like that and monitored the time more closely, but with Kagi I expected better - especially since the email off…

Interesting, because I brought this exact thing up last time Kagi was mentioned here, and the founder and billing engineer assured me that it does NOT convert to a subscription: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43308930

Hey,

As I mentioned in my previous comment, it does not convert IF you do not have a payment method set. In this instance they already had one set which Stripe takes as 'this user wants to renew' and instead decides to not cancel it.

I did mention a workaround we could do, and that's something that we will ensure gets done asap.

Re: Try Switching to Kagi

#173

Post by rkangel »

I've been using Kagi for almost 18 months. In that time we've had a baby, and I have done many many searches about baby related things. It took months after he was born before I started getting any baby related targeted advertising (I'm pretty sure it was a result of a Facebook post). Whereas for the other parents, every advert they've seen has been baby stuff since well before the baby was born.

I like Kagi, I like the principle of aligned priorities over my privacy and I like the search quality. But that really cemented why it's worth it to me.

Re: Try Switching to Kagi

#174

Post by dvngnt_ »

Been a kagi user for years. My only complaint is for a given search it will only return 30ish results vs google that will do about 10 pages of results.

Usually the first 2 are the ones I'm looking for, but doing a deep dive is a lot harder on kagi

Re: Try Switching to Kagi

#175

Post by tigroferoce »

lucasyvas wrote: post #140
prinny_ wrote: post #138

I tried Kagi for 3 months, both for personal and work related queries and honestly I didn't find that many differences with Google. The top results were the same. There was a time I was interested in finding results from the small web such as personal blogs or local stores and Kagi did indeed provide better results, but I couldn't justify paying a monthly subscription over that.

If anything your description could be justification for some people to pay for it.

I personally would pay even if the results were _slightly_ worse. But for me they are as good or better than Google.

I also use a lot the assistant, so I'm happy customer so far.

Re: Try Switching to Kagi

#176

Post by gcau »

dingnuts wrote: post #122
coldpie wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you give some examples of specific queries (like, tell me exactly what to type into the search bar) where you find Kagi returns better results than Google or DDG? I tried Kagi a couple times and didn't notice a significant difference in result quality, so I'd like to see what people find so nice about it.

one I like to use to demonstrate is "how to fix a leaking faucet" Google gives you a full page of ads for plumbers Kagi gives you instructional videos from This Old House. It's night and day.

I just tried this, and google returned a variety of videos (guides for fixing), and various text/website tutorials (home depot, reddit etc), I had to scroll to the absolute bottom to see an ad for a plumber.

Re: Try Switching to Kagi

#177

Post by entuno »

inetknght wrote: post #143
SaberTail wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can search the official python docs on DDG with !python. So if you search for "!python sum", it takes you right there. They have a lot of other "bangs" that work really well, too: https://duckduckgo.com/bangs

Normal users don't want to have to remember magic incantations to not have to sift through malicious "businesses".

Normal users also don't want to have to go through curating their own blacklist of sites to get decent results.

Re: Try Switching to Kagi

#178

Post by coldpie »

gcau wrote: post #176
dingnuts wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

one I like to use to demonstrate is "how to fix a leaking faucet" Google gives you a full page of ads for plumbers Kagi gives you instructional videos from This Old House. It's night and day.

I just tried this, and google returned a variety of videos (guides for fixing), and various text/website tutorials (home depot, reddit etc), I had to scroll to the absolute bottom to see an ad for a plumber.

I had the same experience. I'm located in Minnesota, USA, not currently logged in to Google, and I use an ad blocker. First result was a Home Depot home repair article that looks genuinely useful. Then relevant YouTube videos, Reddit threads, an iFixIt link, a link to the Portland government website. I see zero things I would explicitly call an "ad" on the first page.

Re: Try Switching to Kagi

#179

Post by Liquix »

neogodless wrote: post #110

About a year ago, I tried the free 300 search trial. I liked it, but wasn't ready to commit to the expense. This year, they offered me a free 30 day unlimited trial, so I'm about 10 days into that. I've only used 128 searches so far. What I seem to find is that I use it, get to what I'm looking for, and move on. So it's not really on my mind. But it's subtly refreshing to spend less time fighting search to get what I…

FWIW it's possible to replace the streaming services with something like Jellyfin+Radarr+Sonarr or Kodi+RealDebrid to cut the bill down to <$50/yr, and you also get access to media on all streaming services. leaves plenty of room in the budget for things that can't be self-hosted (like a proper search engine). some may cite ethical concerns but i don't think HBO execs making money hand over fist are concerned about ethics at all
Post reply on HN