Kagi is contemplating the removal of the assistant from its professional tier

From the thread on kagifeedback.org:

"As we prepare to launch Kagi Assistant as a standalone subscription, we're considering changes to how it will be available on the Pro and Starter plans (Search subscriptions).

Currently these plans let you use the Kagi Assistant each month up to the AI cost value included in your subscription, similar to how it works on Ultimate. The change we're consideringn would turn this into more of a trial where you'd still have access to the Assistant, but only up to a fixed usage cap. Once you hit that cap, you'd need to subscribe to either the Ultimate plan or the Kagi Assistant's own subscription to keep using it (same mechanism we already have for Search)."

Guess that serves as a signal that this move from Kagi isn't so bad, if typos is the biggest and greatetst criticism you can come up with as a reply.

I know I'll sound like a Google shill, but I really don't know how this could compete against what Google AI Studio offers for now. Studio even has free quota (while being completely opaque).

I once feel Kagi is some fresh air that we need for search engine. But now it seems to be more and more directly competing against the other LLM web summery products and imo Google/Gemini is light-seconds ahead in that space. The AI Overview is an ultra water downed version of it and it's still somewhat usable.

Perhaps this move is signaling that they'll be back focusing on search itself more though (I hope so).

Kagi is unfortunately in a tough spot, imo.

I'm a happy subscriber, and it's certainly a big improvement over Google search. But the internet just isn't the same place it was five years ago. And as search results (for non-navigational queries) are becoming less useful by the day, I find myself asking AI to do it for me more.

There's a lot to like about Kagi, but they'll probably have to reinvent themselves if they want to grow beyond the niche that high level internet search will probably become.

Agreed. I LOVE Kagi as a search engine - so long as it answers queries in under 2s with no ads, I'm a very happy customer. I don't mind if they flirt with LLMs, but if the LLM work detracts from the search work they will lose me as a paying customer. If the LLM work slows down search results I also lose the only thing I pay for - search result response time and correctness.