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Kagi raises $670k

blog.kagi.com

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Re: Kagi raises $670k

#161

Post by marginalia_nu »

ColinHayhurst wrote: post #146
marginalia_nu wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A small operation in terms of number of developers yes. But not being able to subsidise user growth means they will never be able to build their own full web index as the fixed cost of doing that is too high for a small number of users. What do you reckon the cost of doing this would be? Just doing the napkin math for say a Mojeek sized index (couple of billion docs) doesn't seem to justify a particularly astronomi…

7 billion+ actually, and our investment level mentioned here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36517505

Shit, man. That number is larger every time I check :D

Re: Kagi raises $670k

#162

Post by sgt »

pindab0ter wrote: post #147
sgt wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not $670 million, it's: They've raised a bunch of money! Now let's go and blow that money in Vegas. /s

Is there any specific reason for this take?

See fly.io's "bunch of money" story

Re: Kagi raises $670k

#163

Post by neurostimulant »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #152
marginalia_nu wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A small operation in terms of number of developers yes. But not being able to subsidise user growth means they will never be able to build their own full web index as the fixed cost of doing that is too high for a small number of users. What do you reckon the cost of doing this would be? Just doing the napkin math for say a Mojeek sized index (couple of billion docs) doesn't seem to justify a particularly astronomi…

>What do you reckon the cost of doing this would be? That is indeed the key question. I tried to find out before commenting but the information I found is very vague. Internet Archive spends millions per year, but their index is updated far too slowly for a search engine. I have no idea what it costs to create a Google-size index. Do you think the Mojeek index is good enough to compete with Google?

Internet archive snapshot the whole page while google only index the first few kb of text data on every page (forgot the number, was it 100kb max per page?), so maybe it'll cost lower to build a search engine index compared to an internet preservation project?

Assuming they'll need to index 820 billion pages (the number of pages preserved in the internet archive), at 100kb each, and assuming they use a database with 0.3x text data compression efficiency, they'll need at least 24600 TB to store those text data. Assuming $300 per 16TB disk, then they'll need to spend at least $7,380,000 for disk alone. This is a lot of money just for storage and we haven't included stuff like replication and backup, indexing metadata overhead, etc.

Re: Kagi raises $670k

#164

Post by rychco »

Good, Kagi is great. The killer feature for me is the use of filters for programming/academic/forum results (in addition to having generally more relevant results overall). I will happily continue paying for this service.

Re: Kagi raises $670k

#165

Post by ColinHayhurst »

davedx wrote: post #121
marginalia_nu wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a small operation is exactly the sort of outfit to do it. Makes you focus on what is important. The absolute worst way you can arrange a search engine project is as some sort of manhattan project with a humongous budget and an army of professors and experts. History is littered with bold and ambitious Google killers that went nowhere. You can throw almost any amount of money at an operation, and it will gobbl…

Yeah, there's a lot of truth in this, and it matches my experience, with the caveat that the 3-4 guys need to stay very clear eyed and pragmatic with their technology choices. Kind of covered by the "talented" part but I've seen so many otherwise talented people fall into holes because of this, and I'd guess it applies doubly for building a search engine.

Same. Perhaps for a search engine though my previous experiences in several ambitious startups is not so different. In our case it was 1 guy for a long time https://blog.mojeek.com/2021/03/to-track-or-not-to-track.htm...

Re: Kagi raises $670k

#166

Post by ricardo81 »

neurostimulant wrote: post #163
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What do you reckon the cost of doing this would be? That is indeed the key question. I tried to find out before commenting but the information I found is very vague. Internet Archive spends millions per year, but their index is updated far too slowly for a search engine. I have no idea what it costs to create a Google-size index. Do you think the Mojeek index is good enough to compete with Google?

Internet archive snapshot the whole page while google only index the first few kb of text data on every page (forgot the number, was it 100kb max per page?), so maybe it'll cost lower to build a search engine index compared to an internet preservation project? Assuming they'll need to index 820 billion pages (the number of pages preserved in the internet archive), at 100kb each, and assuming they use a database with…

>100kb max per page?

They changed that limit somewhere in the mid-2000s. Just as well, there's some CMS's out there where there's several hundred kilobytes of inline JS and CSS before any body text.

Re: Kagi raises $670k

#167

Post by DoingIsLearning »

Sakos wrote: post #58
Pinegulf wrote: post #31

>Kagi Search requires an account only because it is a paid service which requires an account for the transaction. ref: https://help.kagi.com/kagi/getting-started/faqs.html#why-doe... Eh... This is a tall order when competition is 'free'. Anyways, I wish them good luck as competition is inherently good.

Competition is free if you don't care about your privacy or your personal data. Many don't, sure, but it seems enough do care such that Kagi has continued to grow and improve over time. A tall order for what? They already have plenty of paying customers and it's a self-sustaining business already. What more do you want?

Not just privacy and personal data. Search results are objectively better than goog & ddg.

Specially so for technical queries or prior art queries it really feels like a 2007 google crawler, which is actually a complement.

Re: Kagi raises $670k

#168

Post by thiht »

Animats wrote: post #6

"Kagi is building a novel ad-free, paid search engine and a powerful web browser as a part of our mission to humanize the web." With 670K? Cuil went through about $30 million to develop a standalone search engine. And that was fifteen years ago, when search was simpler. There may be a market for a search engine company that profitably runs a low-cost operation with very few ads and makes real efforts to keep out spam…

I have no idea how you could justify a $30 million budget. $670k seems much more reasonable to me. I can imagine where this budget goes, the numbers make sense.

Re: Kagi raises $670k

#169

Post by petra »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #136
marginalia_nu wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a small operation is exactly the sort of outfit to do it. Makes you focus on what is important. The absolute worst way you can arrange a search engine project is as some sort of manhattan project with a humongous budget and an army of professors and experts. History is littered with bold and ambitious Google killers that went nowhere. You can throw almost any amount of money at an operation, and it will gobbl…

>I think a small operation is exactly the sort of outfit to do it. A small operation in terms of number of developers yes. But not being able to subsidise user growth means they will never be able to build their own full web index as the fixed cost of doing that is too high for a small number of users. As a consequence, they will always be at the mercy of Google/Bing. The range of things they can innovate on will alw…

//As a consequence, they will always be at the mercy of Google/Bing. The range of things they can innovate on will always be limited.

Sure. But Google/Bing has shown lack of interest in innovating for power searchers. I believe they'll continue doing so.

And even so, this space is big, I'm sure there are many niches that would fit a scrappy, subscription based player.

Re: Kagi raises $670k

#170

Post by greazy »

dmje wrote: post #21

Kagi is really, really good. Lenses (where you can setup set filters for particular search use cases) are particularly good. Very happy to see them raising, and very happy to give them my $10 each month. Money well spent.

How do you use lenses? Trying to use more kagi features.
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