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Kagi Sidekick (alpha)

sidekick.kagi.com

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Re: Kagi Sidekick (alpha)

#11

Post by atestu »

kelvie wrote: post #6

Disclaimer: Happy paid kagi user for over a year now. Why would they offer this for free for small websites? This isn't some VC-backed company getting ready to data-mine us and collect users for enshittification purposes, and in general, Kagi is the site people recommend when they say "if you're not the customer, you're the product".

My take is this helps them index the web, and they're particularly interested in small website with great, niche, organic content.

See also: https://kagi.com/smallweb

Re: Kagi Sidekick (alpha)

#12

Post by freediver »

Kagi founder here. This is very early (alpha) concept built by a single Kagi Labs developer in a few weeks. The proper infrastruture and product is not built yet. We are launching a prototype to get feedback and gauge demand.

Why does this exist?

It would be an efficient way for us to build and expand our own index. Assuming users of this would be Kagi users, we would expand our index by tens of thousands of high quality? personal websites, hobby projects, startups, documentation websites, etc., also helping to surface them in our results (where relevant, like we already do with Kagi Small Web initiative [1]). It is a win-win for both our users and Kagi.

It would also be a way for Kagi to get some exposure outside of kagi.com (provided the search widget has some branding on it).

This is why it makes sense to offer it for free for smaller sites/projects.

And crowdsourcing index is completely opposite direction of one that causes deterioration of web search results in ad-supported search where few entities control the majority of space [2], so we like it.

That is the plan - and since this is a "Labs" project, we are open to it crashing and burning. Know we do not, until we try. Try and try again, we must.

[1] https://kagi.com/smallweb

[2] https://detailed.com/google-control/

Re: Kagi Sidekick (alpha)

#14

Post by sedatk »

I've been a paying Kagi user for a few months now. The only thing that made me miss Google results was immediate answers: the answers that are extracted from a prominent web page and shown directly, so you don't have to click the link. Actually, Kagi has some of that for certain queries, but it's not as extensive as Google's.

So, contrary to the most of the comments here, I support their AI endeavors for the sake of providing answers directly, saving us from clicks.

Their search results are already very good. Can't wait to see Kagi flourish.

Re: Kagi Sidekick (alpha)

#15

Post by [deleted] »

MostlyStable wrote: post #9

As a paying customer, I agree that the only thing I care about from Kagi is search, but ...I think that there is a very non-trivial chance that in the near future, search almost entirely gets eaten by AI. It makes sense to me that a search company would be exploring AI and its interaction with search. While I hope this doesn't become the main focus (until and unless it has to be), the history of companies like Kodak…

[deleted]

Re: Kagi Sidekick (alpha)

#16

Post by paranoidxprod »

freediver wrote: post #12

Kagi founder here. This is very early (alpha) concept built by a single Kagi Labs developer in a few weeks. The proper infrastruture and product is not built yet. We are launching a prototype to get feedback and gauge demand. Why does this exist? It would be an efficient way for us to build and expand our own index. Assuming users of this would be Kagi users, we would expand our index by tens of thousands of high qua…

Thank you for the explanation!

While I agree with others that AI can take away from a products core vision, I’ve been very happy with Kagi’s path and roadmap. I feel like the AI products that you guys have released have served well as complements to search, and hope the trend continues.

Hopefully this helps with indexing while offering a cool service to small creators!

Edit: I forgot to say, the change where a `?` appended to a search triggering the quick answers was an amazing change. I would love to see more features that can be invoked by appending or prepending to the search query.

Re: Kagi Sidekick (alpha)

#17

Post by bbor »

sedatk wrote: post #14

I've been a paying Kagi user for a few months now. The only thing that made me miss Google results was immediate answers: the answers that are extracted from a prominent web page and shown directly, so you don't have to click the link. Actually, Kagi has some of that for certain queries, but it's not as extensive as Google's. So, contrary to the most of the comments here, I support their AI endeavors for the sake of…

They just released a major improvement to these, actually :). So keep trying it! At the risk of sounding like a shill: kagi is by far the best money I spent last year. The “programming” “academia” “small web” and (especially!) “PDF” buttons are worth their weight in GOLD.

These are the main two improvements from last week:

  We added Wolfram|Alpha to enhance our capabilities in calculations, unit conversions, and time queries for better results. This solves a huge number of issues reported for these kind of queries as the results now come from a computational knowledge authorithy.

 In the same spirit of getting answers faster, now simply starting your query with an interrogative word (what, where, who, which, when, how) or just ending it with a question mark (?) will automatically trigger Quick Answer.

Re: Kagi Sidekick (alpha)

#18

Post by unshavedyak »

sedatk wrote: post #14

I've been a paying Kagi user for a few months now. The only thing that made me miss Google results was immediate answers: the answers that are extracted from a prominent web page and shown directly, so you don't have to click the link. Actually, Kagi has some of that for certain queries, but it's not as extensive as Google's. So, contrary to the most of the comments here, I support their AI endeavors for the sake of…

Ultimate/normal customer, and i agree. Personally i think AI _is_ Search, and while we don't need to force them together in some massive behemoth now - laying foundation for being familiar, comfortable and well integrated in the future seems foundational to today. In my eyes at least.

Re: Kagi Sidekick (alpha)

#19

Post by unshavedyak »

smcleod wrote: post #8

Early Kagi adopter here. I love Kagi search and their summarisation features, but I'd rather they just focus on high quality and configurable search and summarisation results rather than new products.

It seems like a feature which is mutually beneficial. Ie user activity on embedded sites helps indicate interest in Kagi index updates.

Isn't this entirely in-line with your desires? Better quality search results by way of having up to date indexes?

Re: Kagi Sidekick (alpha)

#20

Post by psytrx »

atestu wrote: post #11
kelvie wrote: post #6

Disclaimer: Happy paid kagi user for over a year now. Why would they offer this for free for small websites? This isn't some VC-backed company getting ready to data-mine us and collect users for enshittification purposes, and in general, Kagi is the site people recommend when they say "if you're not the customer, you're the product".

My take is this helps them index the web, and they're particularly interested in small website with great, niche, organic content. See also: https://kagi.com/smallweb

I've had the same thoughts on those. Maybe it also allows them to gather data on whether/how people interact with a webpage itself, which may be an indicator for its quality.
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