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Kagi finally let me lay Google Search to rest

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Re: Kagi finally let me lay Google Search to rest

#161

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #65
juunpp wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't your Kagi searches tied to a payment method? That it doesn't exploit you in every way possible is commendable, but stating that it "solves the privacy issues" is a long stretch.

> Aren't your Kagi searches tied to a payment method? Kagi accepts Bitcoin [1]. They also “do not log searches or in any way tie them to an account” [2]. [1] https://help.kagi.com/kagi/plans/payment-methods.html [2] https://help.kagi.com/kagi/privacy/privacy-protection.html

There were studies where it took as little as 10 searches to find out your exact identity. If you pay per month, month's worth of searches is more than enough to de-anonymize you. Ideal solution would involve pay-per-search.

Re: Kagi finally let me lay Google Search to rest

#162

Post by xigoi »

Urgo wrote: post #43
smcleod wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve found Kagis search results far better than DDG, not even in the same ballpark.

If you could provide screen shots or a writeup of HOW they are better that would be helpful. Kogi fans just seems to say its better without really any examples. Not saying its not better, but no one has really shown how it is better.

As a specific example, when searching something about the web, I want to see MDN in the first place. Kagi seems to be the only search engine which can do that.

Re: Kagi finally let me lay Google Search to rest

#163

Post by TisButMe »

mastercheif wrote: post #92
necovek wrote: post #84

I've switched over to Kagi as it was announced myself. However lately, I've found that it started sucking a lot more when it comes to localised search. I am actually not seeing the value and quality I've seen early on, and will likely stop paying for it as I increasingly do have to fall back to Google.

I’ve also seen Kagi’s result quality start to decline in the last few months, and I now automatically bang to Google for anything local. My unsourced theory is that they’ve optimized getting their search costs down, at the expense of some edge cases that don’t show up in their KPIs. I’m still a satisfied customer, the product makes me two Starbucks coffees a month happier than I would be still using Google for everyt…

I work at Kagi. We don't have KPIs that track search quality in that way (we don't have any frontend tracking at all, so we can't know if you click any of the results), and we haven't touched much the sources of data we're using over the last few months. We've also had conflicting reports about this problem, so I'm wondering if it's not variable quality over time and place of our upstreams that's a problem.

That said, we're aware that it's currently something we have to improve, "!g best cafe" is not where we want to be. We're working on it, but if you have specific examples/suggestions, please do submit them to kagifeedback.org so we can track them.

Re: Kagi finally let me lay Google Search to rest

#165

Post by renegat0x0 »

There are several ways to measure search results. Someone should make analysis of Google results.

I searched "Elon Musk" in kagi and Google. I see the results with more text on Kagi. It is more dense. Google shows me more of blank space.

The second thing is domain variety. "Elon Musk" on google shows twice wikipedia, twice CNBC, twice new york times, twice guardian. Mainstream domains are shown several times, with similar titles. Kagi joins groups that nicely.

I searched for "diablo 2 mods". I was expecting hobby pages, fan pages, with forums, mods, wallpapers, maps. It is all gone. Nobody hosts sites like that? The ones there were - are they gone? Has it all split into reddit, nexusmods, facebook groups? Can Google search facebook and reddit now easily? Why such groups are not showed on results, only r/diablo?

I feel that whenever I search something media outlets appear first. Even when searching for mods ign shows with some articles.

Is google a good tool for discovery, or just for searching a precise information like "how to solve this x compilation error"? Has Internet become a dull place because people are consoomers now, not creators? Or people are just focused on creating food images on an Instagram? There is no sense of wonder with results. Maybe my expectations are too high?

Re: Kagi finally let me lay Google Search to rest

#166

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

ncallaway wrote: post #55
Urgo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you could provide screen shots or a writeup of HOW they are better that would be helpful. Kogi fans just seems to say its better without really any examples. Not saying its not better, but no one has really shown how it is better.

Search isn’t really something I can show you one result to say it’s better. I just use it for a week and feel the difference. Magi has a free trial of 100 searches. Sign up and try it. I did, and when I ran out of my 100 searches, I went and got my credit card and paid $5/month. When I tried DDG, I ended up back at Google within a week. I can’t actually explain how it’s better, other than to encourage you to try it a…

You don't have to end up back to Google, there is, for example, Startpage, with the same privacy claims as DDG, but backed up by Goggle, instead of Bing.

Re: Kagi finally let me lay Google Search to rest

#167

Post by hnben »

wutwutwat wrote: post #151
juunpp wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The VPN doesn't know what I search for, it "only" knows what host I connect to and all the associated metadata.

Unless they MITM you and whatever app you’re using doesn’t do cert pinning, or they don’t have a legit root cert that they can sign completely valid certs with

> Unless they MITM you

how high would you estimate the odds of this actually happening for lets say mullvad?

Re: Kagi finally let me lay Google Search to rest

#168

Post by keybits »

manonthewall wrote: post #123
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Aren't your Kagi searches tied to a payment method? Kagi accepts Bitcoin [1]. They also “do not log searches or in any way tie them to an account” [2]. [1] https://help.kagi.com/kagi/plans/payment-methods.html [2] https://help.kagi.com/kagi/privacy/privacy-protection.html

Do they provide "personalized results" like google claims? That would seem to imply they -must- attach searches to your account, wouldn't it?

Looks like this could change in the future, quoting from my Kagi settings screen:

> Save My Search History

> Currently this option can not be turned on. Kagi does not save any searches by default. In the future we may add features that will utilize your search history and then we will allow you to enable this.

Re: Kagi finally let me lay Google Search to rest

#170

Post by chx »

btzs wrote: post #120
chx wrote: post #18

I switched on Oct 3. I was beginning to see way too much of these weird domain name mirrors of things in Google Search instead of the real things and I was reading Doctorow on Google's enshittification and I said "OK, enough of this". I guess it's time to move Google Drive and Gmail as well. The latter is probably fastmail but where to put the Google Drive files? It's like 2TB.

I have moved my files to a managed Nextcloud instance. Important to me is Linux support and Nextcoud works better for me than the alternatives.

Do you have suggestions for ~2TB at a sane price?

For example, https://www.hosting.de/nextcloud/managed-nextcloud/ you can see 2TB costs 2.5x of a 1TB plan.

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