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

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

#11

Post by shaky-carrousel »

EbNar wrote: post #9
sph wrote: post #5

Good. I'm a paying user from day one, and I never used, nor want to see any AI features on my search engine. I'd use Google if I cared about any of that stuff. Honestly, I just want my money to be used to improve good old match-keywords-against-index search.

Well, good for you, I guess. But for the rest of us who use the Assistant this would be a net downgrade, AKA paying the same for less.

For the rest of us that deeply distrust and despise the anti-ethical and wasteful assistants is an upgrade.

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

#12

Post by imjustmsk »

sph wrote: post #5

Good. I'm a paying user from day one, and I never used, nor want to see any AI features on my search engine. I'd use Google if I cared about any of that stuff. Honestly, I just want my money to be used to improve good old match-keywords-against-index search.

Wouldn't a a feature to turn all AI features work? You can turn of all AI from Brave search and duckduckgo and for Google just use startpage.

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

#13

Post by willis936 »

To me this seems fine. You'd run out of tokens pretty quick without ultimate anyway, so it is a small cross section of users this affects.

I am interested to learn if anything else is coming besides a billing change. Like will ultimate/assistant subscribers get access to MCP?

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

#14

Post by cyanydeez »

I recommend Kagi focus on being a sidecar to AIs rather than try to offer it in any way; I'm hoping the API comes out and I can get proper search results for my local LLM.

Unless they're building their own LLMs, best not to annoy people who already see random LLMs everywhere.

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

#15

Post by littlecranky67 »

Valodim wrote: post #8

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 wa…

I didn't renew my Kagi subscription, as I am now mostly using AI based search (google, chat.bing.com, perplexity). Search engine wise, Kagi was superior but it is just that traditional search engines are less and less needed with the rise of AI.

BUT Kagi is in a good spot, as they have their user data (and the feedback/upvote/downvote/blacklist feature) to train their own models on. Maybe their AI will one day be a superior search. Especially when the big ones like Google will start to enshittify the free AI tier with ads, or SEO-like AI manipulation on Google will take off.

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

#16

Post by cyanydeez »

imjustmsk wrote: post #12
sph wrote: post #5

Good. I'm a paying user from day one, and I never used, nor want to see any AI features on my search engine. I'd use Google if I cared about any of that stuff. Honestly, I just want my money to be used to improve good old match-keywords-against-index search.

Wouldn't a a feature to turn all AI features work? You can turn of all AI from Brave search and duckduckgo and for Google just use startpage.

He's say splitting the pot for AI features reduces the value of improved search quality.

I'd rather that too. Kagi should try to curate like a Librarian and not some kind of oracle. They're not going to capture people with offering AI assistants. They will capture people by filtering out all the garbage places like Google throw into their results to get ad dollars.

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

#18

Post by Apreche »

sph wrote: post #5

Good. I'm a paying user from day one, and I never used, nor want to see any AI features on my search engine. I'd use Google if I cared about any of that stuff. Honestly, I just want my money to be used to improve good old match-keywords-against-index search.

Exactly. Same as you I am just paying for search. I never used the assistant, and never will. Right now Kagi is good enough at search that it would be annoying to lose. But if I was forced to go back to Google I could survive by using adblock. I really wish Kagi would just put all their engineering efforts on search to make it so good that I couldn’t possibly live without it.

I don’t need a new browser. I don’t need a replacement for Google Maps, since Google Maps is actually good and Kagi will never even catch up to Apple Maps. I don’t need any AI trash.

Just have everybody work on the search engine to make it is faster, more reliable, and free of content farms or slop. That is the only reason I’m paying for Kagi.

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

#20

Post by denkmoon »

Valodim wrote: post #8

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 wa…

Why though. Why does it need to grow beyond a niche premium option? As long as they’re paying the bills and everyone is happy why not just let a good thing keep chugging along.
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