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How I Use Kagi

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Re: How I Use Kagi

#51
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you perhaps elaborate on which companies and in what capacity?

Yes, Yandex, they pay them for some of their search results. Here is their own statement, where they refuse to stop, even though people keep asking them: https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integratio...

[flagged]

Re: How I Use Kagi

#52
I tried to give Kagi a fair shot by using it for a few months. I loved a lot of features, especially the boost/block lists. But I always felt the responses were way too slow for something I use that much. I benchmarked a handful of queries and confirmed they were consistently ~3x slower than Google for normal searches and 5-10x slower for image searches on my home network. I’m sure there are many factors that play into that, so maybe the reason I haven’t seen others complain about the speed has just been that the problem is unique to my network. But ultimately I opted to switch back to Google for my daily driver and just use Kagi for specific lenses.

Re: How I Use Kagi

#53
post #12

Unfortunately, Kagi works with Russian companies and pays them money, which in my book is a no-no. I do not want any of my money to contribute to the Russian economy in any way, because I know what is happening to people in Ukraine. (I was a Kagi subscriber, no more, because of this)

If we look at history, Russia government's capacity to withstand punishment of any kind in detriment to its own citizens is limitless. I applaud your determination but I wouldn't expect that to put any kind of pressure on Russia w.r.t its stance on the Ukraine invasion. Things need to get way uglier for Russia before its leaders take any corrective actions and I'd argue we'll never reach that threshold, sort of having (yet) another armed revolution of sorts (which I don't see happening either).

Re: How I Use Kagi

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're gonna have a hard time using anything right now if you want to avoid services run in a country not spending on a war somewhere.

It's not hypocritical to set the bar at a given place, like an ongoing war of territorial expansion and child abduction run by an autocrat that won't be replaced until his death. One with near complete popular support.

This could easily refer to any of the despots the US backs

Re: How I Use Kagi

#55

I always feel really grotty about evangelising for products, but I switched to Kagi about six months ago and it really is a better experience. In almost all cases, the search results are as good as or better than Google, and I don't have to scroll through an increasing number of misleading ads to see them. I'm a happy customer. When I first switched, I would often click the button to run the search on google for quer…

> I always feel really grotty about evangelising for products

You shouldn't. Word-of-mouth should be the primary way people discover products.

In ye olden days, a region's best bakery or blacksmith didn't become well-known because they put up signposts everywhere, but because the quality of their craft made their name known far and wide.

I feel very comfortable recommending products that are actually good, ran by a UX-first company and reasonably priced.

Re: How I Use Kagi

#56
post #12

Unfortunately, Kagi works with Russian companies and pays them money, which in my book is a no-no. I do not want any of my money to contribute to the Russian economy in any way, because I know what is happening to people in Ukraine. (I was a Kagi subscriber, no more, because of this)

Worth noting that it’s about 2% of their search costs, so at most $0.20/mo of your bill is going to a Russia company (probably much less given they have a profit margin, employee costs, hosting costs, etc).

I like the idea of zero going to help Russian economy (and in turn the war), but a bunch of major companies also do fractional percent business with Russia which I just don’t know about. I don’t want to over penalize the small company that’s honest about it.

Re: How I Use Kagi

#57

I always feel really grotty about evangelising for products, but I switched to Kagi about six months ago and it really is a better experience. In almost all cases, the search results are as good as or better than Google, and I don't have to scroll through an increasing number of misleading ads to see them. I'm a happy customer. When I first switched, I would often click the button to run the search on google for quer…

> When I first switched, I would often click the button to run the search on google for queries that weren't immediately giving me what I wanted Same, I found it took a while to adjust my searching too. Kagi is much more sensitive to spelling things wrong. Google gets around that by only using the search query as an inspiration but that also introduces a lot of fuzziness in the result IMO. With Kagi, you get as much…

The increased fuzzy interpretation is Google's greatest downfall. It takes away any ability to use it as a power user or for super-specific stuff. No Google, you don't know better than me. I need something really specific and you're "smoothing" the results to what some average random searcher might want!!

I am the point in my software engineering career where I simply don't need those dumbed down results. I need some niche research paper or the one guy's extremely in-depth benchmarking blog I found months ago but forgot to bookmark.

It got to the point where Google simply could not help me in my day job so I see the monthly cost as an essential expense similar to my JetBrains sub.

Re: How I Use Kagi

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not hypocritical to set the bar at a given place, like an ongoing war of territorial expansion and child abduction run by an autocrat that won't be replaced until his death. One with near complete popular support.

This could easily refer to any of the despots the US backs

Is that some sort of gotcha? By all means, boycott those countries as well. Support from the US certainly is not a free pass.

Re: How I Use Kagi

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could easily refer to any of the despots the US backs

Is that some sort of gotcha? By all means, boycott those countries as well. Support from the US certainly is not a free pass.

Follow the logic and boycott the US as well! Now you have zero viable search engines

Re: How I Use Kagi

#60
post #23
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait until you hear about the EU! https://e360.yale.edu/digest/europe-russia-ukraine-war-natur... Hell, a Spanish company just violated export sanctions and sold a machine used to make artillery barrels to Russia, and the Spanish government just shrugged. I'm not sure why Kagi has to be squeaky clean down to the last dollar when our own governments don't even have to meaningfully enforce their own sanctions.

This kind of whataboutism is what leads to the current sad state of the world. One can look at any moral choice issue, say "but what about… [insert something here]" and then proceed to ignore it and do nothing. I choose to take moral stands. Yes, it might be insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but I still choose to do so. Having read the (rather disappointing) responses: all of them create some sort of artif…

You don’t have a leg to stand on when dismissing criticism as whataboutisms, chief.

“Kagi is superior product and a vital competitor to breaking the search oligopoly — but what about their loose and indirect association with the Russian economy?!”

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