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Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

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Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#121

Post by gkasev »

gkasev wrote: post #44

There have been a couple of discussions on HN lately [0][1] about the current state of search engine results, be it served by Google, Bing, DDG or other. Also, it seems like there is a lot of work on search engine alternatives as in the case of Kagi and also here [2] to name but a few. Of all alternatives, Kagi seems to be off to a very good start and I personally am a very happy beta user. What I have not seen so fa…

Not enough answers to be representative, but here is what we have so far:

     % Customers who find the price acceptable
       ^
       |
  100% |------|
       |      |------|
   80% |             |
       |             |------|
   60% |                    |
       |                    |
   40% |                    |
       |                    |-------------|
   20% |                                  |
       |                                  |
       -------|------|------|------|------|-->

       0$     5$     8$    10$    12$    20$

                  Price per month
UPDATE: Upvoting another person's answer is something that I cannot differentiate, so I cannot include it in the summary above.

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#122

Post by pelasaco »

omnicognate wrote: post #118
pelasaco wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If more people would pay it would cost less. If everyone paid it would barely cost anything at all. Are you assuming it or do you know for a fact? That's normally not how startups work.. as long there is an increasing paying demand for their product, I don't see why they are going to reduce their price, quite the opposite actually.

If it were culturally accepted that search is something you need to pay for then yes, I am extremely confident it would come to cost very, very little per user. A startup with a small user base may well grow the way you say, but in a mature industry providing a commodity service to most of the population, margins will be squeezed razor thin and the prices will reflect the actual cost to provide. Note that I'm not say…

> The alternative is to stick with the ad-driven, dross-filled panopticon we already have.

Sure, I'm all for paying for something if they don't track me, if I can use their API as I need, etc.. the only thing that wasn't clear to me was the conclusion of "more people paying, cheaper it will get" because that probably isn't the case.

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#123

Post by jamesdoe1336 »

freediver wrote: post #3

Founder here. Thanks for submitting it, but I am afraid there is not much to see right now. We are still in closed beta (mostly to control cost and gradually improve user experience), with much more left to do. There are some examples of what Kagi can do in my twitter feed. [1] Main idea of Kagi is to offer a paid search product, where user is also the customer and is central to everything that happens. Btw. Kagi is…

Hi Vladamir.

If it is possible can you share what is your tech stack specially your database ?

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#125

Post by xigoi »

rytill wrote: post #112
Tepix wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a way to prove that i had paid yet remain anonymous (ideally without a session attached to me)? You offer pay-per-use or pay-per-month or both? Also feedback regarding your current website: So there is merely one sentence: It says "Premium search engine where everything on the page matters. " Yet, to the left and the right of this sentence are wiggling clouds that don't matter at all and distract the reader.…

There is a lot more on the current website than that sentence and the clouds.

OP is contesting the claim that everything on the page matters. If anything on the page doesn't matter, the claim is wrong.

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#126

Post by niemandhier »

Semaphor wrote: post #83
gostsamo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-censorship is the behavior where one does not perform certain searches because their interest in the topic will become known to others. This might include health information, sexual interests, political views or other sensitive topics. The fact that the search engine has your name, address, and payment info means that they can associate you with 100% certainty to everything you search for which can have negative…

I pinged their devs, especially regarding their location. I’d assume US as that’s where their founder is according to his personal website [0], but I agree it would be better to have that information there. Thanks for the explanation. I can only repeat that I don’t think this is solvable. Unlike Signal, which uses E2E this is not possible here, so whatever promises Kagi makes will always have to stay promises as they…

I think it it solvable:

1st Allow users to share the token by which they are identified. 2nd Implement a 3rd party website that offers a 'free tier' via token roulette.

That will generate noise in search results, making it hard to pin a particular search on someone. Optimally users would be able to decide how much 'noise generating searches' they allow.

Off course that would only work if paying users would be volume / rate limited.

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#127

Post by skinkestek »

Tepix wrote: post #77
freediver wrote: post #3

Founder here. Thanks for submitting it, but I am afraid there is not much to see right now. We are still in closed beta (mostly to control cost and gradually improve user experience), with much more left to do. There are some examples of what Kagi can do in my twitter feed. [1] Main idea of Kagi is to offer a paid search product, where user is also the customer and is central to everything that happens. Btw. Kagi is…

Is there a way to prove that i had paid yet remain anonymous (ideally without a session attached to me)? You offer pay-per-use or pay-per-month or both? Also feedback regarding your current website: So there is merely one sentence: It says "Premium search engine where everything on the page matters. " Yet, to the left and the right of this sentence are wiggling clouds that don't matter at all and distract the reader.…

After you log in however it is closer to true.

Personally I'd almost say I can live fine with not pleasing extreme nitpickers but I think they'll fix it.

The important point for me is unlike Google and DDG almost every result on Kagi does contain the thing you search for and if not you can report a bug and get a reply from a real human who will update the behavior. I've seen it multiple times after I joined their chat.

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#128

Post by ejb999 »

xigoi wrote: post #125
rytill wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot more on the current website than that sentence and the clouds.

OP is contesting the claim that everything on the page matters. If anything on the page doesn't matter, the claim is wrong.

>>If anything on the page doesn't matter, the claim is wrong.

Define 'matters' and 'matters to who'.

May not matter to you, but if research shows that people interested in the reading about the product stay's around longer if the page is visually appealing - then it matters to someone.

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#129

Post by snielson »

Semaphor wrote: post #15

Been using them for about a week, very happy with it. Regional results (especially since the last update) feel as automatic as google. While I still hope they’ll add my suggestion of a bang for region switches, most queries I do don’t need one, and it properly switches between English and German. All of the DDG bangs. Seriosuly, search without bangs is nothing I’d ever want to go back to. Built-In Domain Blacklist. G…

I've been using Kagi for a couple months and generally like it. It's the default search engine in my browser.

My only complaint is that occasionally I run a search and get zero results, like the page is literally blank (I try the search again and it is still blank). I then try the search on Google and get what I'm looking for. I guess this happens because Kagi's index is smaller, but I don't really know.

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#130

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

Thank you for this!

I would really love to pay you for this service. Chomping at the bit. However, I and many others would be much more willing to do this if we don't have to rely on your privacy policy (i.e., pinky swear) to keep our data private.

I think the simplest thing for you to do would be to implement a an option that allows paying with cryptocurrency (ideally Monero), and which doesn't require an email address. Just generate a subscriber number or username, allow login with user + pass (+ TOTP/HOTP) and allow me to fill my account with crypto!

Someone below mentions a token-based scheme for injecting noise; that's more elegant in some ways but of course more complicated to implement.

thank you for your work!

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