Kagi search reached 20k paying members • Hacker News Board

Re: Kagi search reached 20k paying members

#161

Post by weikju » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 4:35 AM UTC

anon-3988 wrote: post #91

cwsx wrote: post #21

I switched to them a few months ago, I was previously using duckduckgo (and Google before that). As most of you have probably noticed Google search results have seriously dropped in quality the last few years, but especially in 2023. I'm no longer able to get meaningful results for almost any topic, especially if it's technical, the only results are AI generated (?) / obvious SEO spam websites. It takes me multiple d…

> I wouldn't call myself a power user of Kagi, but even then I'm getting far better results than other search engines, definitely worth the price per month. This only works as long as Kagi is a niche. The moment any search engine becomes commonplace I think they will inevitably succumb to SEO. Otherwise, they would have to change their methodologies every once in a while to completely flip the ecosystem.

hopefully what will happen is no single search engine will be dominant, ensuring that problem can't happen (we'll probably have other problems instead)

Re: Kagi search reached 20k paying members

#162

Post by justinclift » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 4:36 AM UTC

Doesn't this sound like a substantial distraction?

    The process from here involves setting up a business entity in Germany, so we can
    import the t-shirts, store them in a warehouse, connect inventory logistics and ship
    them all over the world. This includes building a website and connecting it to a
    back-end database. So, we basically ended up owning a merch production operation
    end-to-end, just so that we could ensure premium quality of these t-shirts!

Re: Kagi search reached 20k paying members

#163

Post by greenmartian » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 4:39 AM UTC

layoric wrote: post #77

solarkraft wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it have an option to exclude commercial websites? That'd be quite useful to me. Pretty much every time I try to find information about a product, all I find are sites trying to sell it to me (but I already have it and want to find information about it, damn it!).

Another Kagi user here, yes, the customization of results is way better than any other search engine I've used. Eg, personalization can be manually set to lower or raise weight of results from specific domains. This has become extremely useful to not only filter out bad sites, but increase relevant results when you regularly get information from sites like GitHub etc. Stats are released about these as well so you can…

Interesting that HN is pinned way more than stackoverflow.

Re: Kagi search reached 20k paying members

#164

Post by beej71 » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 4:51 AM UTC

cornstalks wrote: post #44

evanjrowley wrote: post #15

Why is their logo the letter g instead of k? Have they considered the risk of a trademark violation lawsuit from their competitor, Google? As one of the 20K paying members, I feel embarrassed that I hadn't noticed this until now. Because this article presented the idea of wearing a Kagi T-Shirt, I suddenly started to care about what the logo looked like. Also, yes, I am excited to rep Kagi search.

I’ve been using Kagi for a month or two now and I still cannot for the life of me find the right tab because of their weird yellow “g” logo. When I think “Kagi” I definitely don’t think “yellow g”. But hey, every interaction I’ve ever had with a UI/UX designer has been… counterproductive, so I guess this is par for the course.

Interestingly I found that I instantly recognize my Kagi tabs by the favicon.

I wonder what the breakdown is between people who make the association versus those who don't.

Re: Kagi search reached 20k paying members

#165

Post by rapind » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 4:57 AM UTC

anon-3988 wrote: post #91

cwsx wrote: post #21

I switched to them a few months ago, I was previously using duckduckgo (and Google before that). As most of you have probably noticed Google search results have seriously dropped in quality the last few years, but especially in 2023. I'm no longer able to get meaningful results for almost any topic, especially if it's technical, the only results are AI generated (?) / obvious SEO spam websites. It takes me multiple d…

> I wouldn't call myself a power user of Kagi, but even then I'm getting far better results than other search engines, definitely worth the price per month. This only works as long as Kagi is a niche. The moment any search engine becomes commonplace I think they will inevitably succumb to SEO. Otherwise, they would have to change their methodologies every once in a while to completely flip the ecosystem.

I think it also has to do with incentives. If your business model is selling ads then you have a balancing act between user and customer satisfaction.

With Kagi as I understand it, the customer is the user since it’s a premium product that isn’t selling ads. There’s really no good reason for them not to just nuke bad actors.

Re: Kagi search reached 20k paying members

#166

Post by wakawaka28 » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 5:01 AM UTC

Why would you make a t-shirt without the company name fairly large on it? Especially when you have aren't a household name yet. It's weak advertising...

Re: Kagi search reached 20k paying members

#167

Post by davkan » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 5:09 AM UTC

Honestly I just pay for kagi because i find google to be a despicable company and every other search alternative is trash. Apart from YouTube, search was my last Google dependency and I’d happily pay $10/mo to get rid of it. Encountering Google search on an unconfigured browser now gives me ick feelings similar to when I occasionally have to go on to Facebook.

Re: Kagi search reached 20k paying members

#168

Post by Departed7405 » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 5:10 AM UTC

ijhuygft776 wrote: post #120

monk_the_dog wrote: post #79

I am a happy customer, and recently discovered their URL rewrite rules: https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/redirects.html . This lets me automatically rewrite urls so reddit automatically opens in "old" reddit and boost docs open with the latest version of boost. Really feels like this search engine was built for people like me.

There's a Firefox addon that does that too [0]... and another one made specifically for old.reddit [1] 0. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/ 1. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-re...

Add-ons are terrible because they fingerprint you.Javascript allows for sharing of addons names. Having this niche add-on coupled with your device and browser type, IP, timezone this gives unique fingerprint. This comes from someone who used to have 50+ Firefox add-ons.

Re: Kagi search reached 20k paying members

#169

Post by al_borland » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 5:20 AM UTC

paxcoder wrote: post #81

NelsonMinar wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone else wondering, they raised $670,000 from 42 small investors in June 2023. Non-traditional fundraise. I agree that spending that money on t-shirts is weird. As a new Kagi subscriber I don't want a t-shirt. I want a thriving search engine. https://blog.kagi.com/safe-round

Suggestion for Kagi: If you haven't made the t-shirts yet, offer users to request/reserve one first. That way you won't ship to those who don't want it (though you won't ship to some who do, so maybe save some t-shirts on the side for those willing to contact you to ask if there's any left after the deadline)

Reading the blog post it sounds like users will get a credit toward a free shirt/stickers. They will still need to pay shipping, which should be enough to keep people from getting it just for the hell of it. After a period of time, if there are unclaimed shirts they will open them up to those users beyond the first 20k.

While it sounds like they will print 20k no matter what, it doesn’t seem like they will randomly ship them out to users. They really can’t, as they don’t have the addresses of all their users.

Re: Kagi search reached 20k paying members

#170

Post by al_borland » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 5:28 AM UTC

tremarley wrote: post #27

Freely distributing 20,000 t-shirts to your first 20,000 customers is a nice reward. But Kagi is missing an opportunity for a huge brand awareness campaign from this. People who are already really happy with Kagi would become brand ambassadors. Why isn’t the name ‘Kagi’ found anywhere on the t-shirt design? People who want to know where it’s from would have to go out of the way to ask the tee wearer.

Maybe that’s by design. If someone sees “Kagi” on the shirt they may look it up, not get it, and move on. If instead the dog acts as an ice breaker, “cute dog,” then the person wearing it can mention what it is, but more importantly, why they like and use it.

I’d also be much more likely to wear a shirt without a URL on it. I’ve been gifted shirts with URLs before, I have never and will never wear them in public.