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I Lost Faith in Kagi

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Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#111

Post by ceejayoz »

foobarian wrote: post #69
Bnichs wrote: post #6

I think a lot of this can be ascribed to "startups don't always do the right thing" and you have to learn a lot over time. That's said, I've been a customer for a while and the t-shirt debacle is one of the dumbest things I've seen a small company do. Even if you try and call it marketing cost (no name on the shirt makes that hard), there's no way it was the most efficient use of money for marketing. And setting up i…

On the other hand, I see it as evidence that adtech is not in control of the company. Public companies or companies beholden to ad money would never be able to get away with a stunt like that. Can you imagine Meta sending each of their users a T-shirt? At > $40 RPU they could afford it.

> Can you imagine Meta sending each of their users a T-shirt?

If they thought it'd help, absolutely. Facebook has a long history of doling out swag; I've got a free Oculus sitting downstairs.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#112

Post by rsynnott »

tqwhite wrote: post #72
andy99 wrote: post #35

I stopped reading once I realized it was just a rant about their business. Why would I care? Their search is better, it's worth what I pay, if it stops being worth the money I'll stop paying. I could care less how their business is run. If I was investing I might look closer, until then, the maximum I have at risk is the $100 or so it costs a year, which I'm comfortable with. Did I miss something more damning later i…

[flagged]

> I had Claude3 read it for claims about quality, security, privacy. It found none.

You might want to consider actually reading things for yourself, rather than assuming the magic robots are telling the truth (the magic robot did not tell you the truth, here).

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#113

Post by ACow_Adonis »

nebulous1 wrote: post #37
smcleod wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like Vlad did a pretty sane, human thing reaching out and offering to discuss. The authors replies seem pretty rude (or at least somewhat aggressive / dismissive). Kagi is Vlads baby and I could imagine he would care and try to explain when he thinks someone has the wrong idea. However to the author - it’s just another service he doesn’t use anymore.

You can make that argument for initial approach, but it falls flat on its face after the author told Vlad that they didn't want to communicate with them and Vlad responded with a lecture. Vlad comes off as fairly unhinged here.

Perhaps we live in different worlds, but there's a world of distanced between unhinged and roughly 3 emails to someone who wrote a peice targeted specifically at your business.

If anything the replies in that Mastadon thread make the author and others appear petty, combative and immature imo, and I do not say that as someone who agrees with all Vlad's perspectives.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#115

Post by edude03 »

(this articles formatting was super hard to read, I love the web 1.0 "just get it out there" vibe but man I wish CSS had a good "reasonable default" for lots of text)

I'm a huge fan of kagi and have been paying for it for as long as paying for it has been possible - that said, I think the author is spot on about the long term viability of the project considering their limited funding, limited employees, very wide (yet unproven) interests AND a leader who's maybe not so receptive to feedback.

For example I was part of the Orion beta and I left feedback in the discord that it took ~30 seconds on the then top of the line iPhone (13 Pro Max?) to load the interface which made it hard to use and I thought it was unreasonably slow and he said something like "that's not slow it's totally reasonable" and since then I decided it wasn't worth leaving any more feedback and have since left the community.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#116

Post by lolinder »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #103
lijok wrote: post #73

Lori seems (from the blog post and the subsequent email chain with the CEO) to be unnecessarily combative and most definitely too emotionally invested in Kagi. You're paying, what, 10, 25 USD - are you getting a good service for it? If not, unsubscribe, if yes, what's the problem? Sounds like they're profitable now, so little risk of the service dissapearing. Unnecessary drama by people who live for drama. My only ad…

For a second there, I thought you were talking about Vlad! Based on the exchanges, Vlad is both extremely combative and unwilling to accept the possibility that he is wrong (which he is here). Being aggressively wrong is no way to go through life. Vlad should be more humble, and open to being wrong, rather than being unnecessarily belligerent.

I don't get the sense that Vlad is combative, just (over)confident. There are no personal attacks, no aggression, no flaming or flamebait. He just is very confident in his approach and doesn't slow down to listen to criticism. Not the best approach as a founder, but not combative.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#117

Post by Zambyte »

infecto wrote: post #8

I still pay for Kagi for its search but this has kind of been the problem from the beginning with their org. - Search has been a breath of fresh air, I wish they dedicated more time to it. - Orion...is ok? I use it off and on and it is fine but would rather have better search. The premise of the browser is nice but it feels like this could probably be a whole separate company or a purely open source endeavor. It has…

> I wish they dedicated more time to it.

What changes you have in mind to search functionality? I feel like the core search is rock solid as is, but they address search quality reports on their feedback forums all the time.

To me, the AI features (and specifically how they are only used when you opt in per query) are enhancing search, and the time they have been allocating to those features has continuously improved Kagis utility to me.

Note: I subscribe to Kagi Ultimate, so I use some AI features that are not available in the base plans.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#119

Post by rsynnott »

tqwhite wrote: post #49

[flagged]

Oh, ffs, is this going to be the new thing, now? People pretending to read articles by feeding them to an AI and believing whatever old nonsense it spits out? I do think the "humanity is doomed" angle with AIs is overplayed, but okay, yeah, if people are going to do that, maybe humanity _is_ doomed.

If you read the article, you will discover that your magic robot is mistaken.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#120

Post by mst »

> the only real killer feature it has to me is the ability to block domains from your results, which I can currently only do in other search engines via a user script that doesn't help me on mobile

User scripts are doable on Firefox for Android.

For iOS, somewhat ironically, I think you'd need Orion.

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