Kagi: A Premium Search Engine • Hacker News Board

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#151

Post by ben_w » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 4:31 PM UTC

zmb_ wrote: post #73

amatecha wrote: post #30

Whoa... this was really confusing to me for a moment. Kagi.com used to be one of the premier digital commerce platforms for software and shareware, especially Mac games, serving customers from 1994 until 2016. [0][1][2] Anyone who registered one of Ambrosia's awesome shareware games used Kagi's services, for example. It's really weird to see the company name and domain return again in this way! Best of luck to the te…

This brought back memories. The first money I ever made from software as a teenager was through Kagi. It was some Mac utility shareware apps written in REALbasic around the year 2000.

REALbasic? Hmm, if it was about 2006 I’d wonder if it was some of my creations.

Long time since I did shareware in any language, though. Something like £2k total takings, I wasn’t good at business.

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#152

Post by yissp » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 4:33 PM UTC

berkeleyjunk wrote: post #140

sytelus wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Google went completely add free, they would need to charge $57 per year to entire US population. I bet vast majority of population will rather be willing to endure ads. HN bubble often forgets how small it is relative to whole population.

I think it is worse. The people who are willing to pay $57 to opt out of ads are probably the most profitable (I am guessing here: no citation available). Seems like a case of Adverse selection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_selection

That doesn't seem obvious to me. I'd be more inclined to think anyone willing to pay to avoid ads likely isn't very receptive to advertising in the first place. If someone is so annoyed by ads, they're probably not going to be clicking on them, right?

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#153

Post by tifadg1 » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 4:45 PM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #105

ejb999 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really sure that you need a 'silicon valley salary' to afford $10/month. Netflix charges almost double this and they have 100's of millions of subscribers worldwide; my guess is that a premium search engine only needs a small fraction of that number of users to become a worthwhile and profitable service. Can't say if I would pay for it or not - haven't used it yet - but if that was the price of dumping google sea…

Actually the comparison with Netflix is quite apt. For twice the price I get lots (and I really mean lots) of shows streamed to my house. In contrast here, here I get a search service that is provided by others for free. For the average Joe the value proposition is very different. So you really have to be valuing privacy very strongly and/or have significant disposible income. Note I actually like the service and I s…

I see value in paying for a service which would curate results by eliminating content farms.

Average Joe would also not see any value as he doesn't know what a content farm is to begin with.

It's all about finding a niche (and selling out once you're on track to get traction, but alas).

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#154

Post by visarga » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 4:50 PM UTC

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #10

deanc wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I can be frank, nothing google has done or is doing with my search data bothers me in the slightest. If it uses my data to help target advertising - so be it. It doesn't bother me either as I use uBlock. So whether I pay or not, the only thing I care about is the quality of my search results. What makes you think you can do better than a company with over 20 years experience, 10s of 1000s of engineers working on t…

If anyone is able to take a large bite out of Google's search market share, it will be by figuring out how to not drown results in ads, SEO and blogspam. If they can successfully pull that off, it has obvious value.

Easy to detect ads and affiliate links, just down rank all commercial sites. The good sites are all free anyway.

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#155

Post by kazinator » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 5:03 PM UTC

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.

Your application of logic is not valid here, because "everything on the page matters" has not been given in a formal way, and you're cherry-picking one interpretation.

What if it is intended to mean something like:

  ∀x ∃u: onpage(x) →  matters(x, u)

"For each element x, there is some user u, such that if x is on the page, it matters to u."

This is not contradicted by this version of "anything doesn't matter":

  ∃z ∃v: onpage(z) ∧ ¬ matters(z, v)

"There exist elements z for which there are users v, such that z is on the page, yet doesn't matter to v."

But is contradicted by a different version of "anything doesn't matter" like:

  ∃z ∀v : onpage(x) ∧ ¬ matters(z, v)

But you can easily find a person in the world who doesn't care about any aspect of something, let alone just one aspect of it. So what?

If we restrict x to just the universe of users who are interested in at least one thing on the page (i.e. who are actual users), and we have somehow ascertained that everything on the page is covered by at least one user in that set, then the claim holds. You need to supply actual evidence that there is an item which no user ("person interested in at least one thing") is interested in; just you not being interested in something isn't it.

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#156

Post by IgorPartola » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 5:03 PM UTC

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…

Couple of things:

First, price point is 2-4x what I expected. Not saying I wouldn’t be a customer but at $5 unlimited it would be a no brainer for me.

Related: I would love to see family pricing. $12-13 price point is just right for me to share with my family with up to six people or some such.

Privacy is important. Is it possible to provide a payment system that is anonymous? Cash in the mail? BTC or similar? What is your policy on logging searches?

Will your results ever feature ads? Affiliate links? Will you ever attempt to create Kagi Plus social network?

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#157

Post by muhammadusman » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 5:14 PM UTC

IgorPartola wrote: post #156

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…

Couple of things: First, price point is 2-4x what I expected. Not saying I wouldn’t be a customer but at $5 unlimited it would be a no brainer for me. Related: I would love to see family pricing. $12-13 price point is just right for me to share with my family with up to six people or some such. Privacy is important. Is it possible to provide a payment system that is anonymous? Cash in the mail? BTC or similar? What i…

Echoing the family plan, I would love to have my family use the search engine but at $10+ per person, it doesn't make sense.

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#158

Post by spurgu » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 5:18 PM UTC

IgorPartola wrote: post #156

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…

Couple of things: First, price point is 2-4x what I expected. Not saying I wouldn’t be a customer but at $5 unlimited it would be a no brainer for me. Related: I would love to see family pricing. $12-13 price point is just right for me to share with my family with up to six people or some such. Privacy is important. Is it possible to provide a payment system that is anonymous? Cash in the mail? BTC or similar? What i…

+1 for anonymous payments (Monero please?). I am signed up for the beta with a non-personal email but using traditional payments will throw that semi-anonymity out of the window.

What subscription models exist in the crypto world right now, i.e. to automatically charge me every month?

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#159

Post by spurgu » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 5:22 PM UTC

aemreunal wrote: post #43

freediver wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. We are running on a tight budget, completely bootstrapped by funds from my previous exit. Trying to control cost and all that while establishing product-market fit, which is the reason the beta is closed for now. Instead of starting with technology, I started by selecting people that I can work with and are crazy enough to accept working on such an ambitious idea. It turned out that they really liked Crystal an…

As someone who happily pays for many "free" products/services (like DNS service through NextDNS), I am super excited about products like yours, where I can get a better product and more/better features for money. I received my invite this morning and I am super excited to check it out. I wish you all the best of luck and I am really rooting for your success!

+1, happy paying NextDNS customer here (for 1.5 years now) and recent Kagi user, very happy so far (likely future customer)!

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#160

Post by bluish29 » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 5:29 PM UTC

karimf wrote: post #84

tmsbrg wrote: post #79

It seems the trend lately for new services to be built with rather high monthly fees. From the FAQ: "We plan to offer entry level plans for as low as $10/month, unlimited plan at around $20/mo as well as make bundles (to include Kagi email and other services), family plans and annual payment discounts available." I have to say I support a lot of these initiatives, but I can't help but think altogether they're creatin…

Well, services accessible to as many people as possible? Google, Facebook, Instagram? Is there any possible way to do that without using advertisement as the business model?

In US, something like this can exist but usually will be called communist.