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Kagi raises $670k

blog.kagi.com

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Re: Kagi raises $670k

#171

Post by marginalia_nu »

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…

A search engine doesn't index the HTML code. You're looking at a few Kb per document. You also don't need multiple historical snapshots of the document like WM retains.

So you're looking at maybe 20 bn docs, 4 Kb each. 100 Tb, before compression.

Re: Kagi raises $670k

#173

Post by fauigerzigerk »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #171
neurostimulant wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A search engine doesn't index the HTML code. You're looking at a few Kb per document. You also don't need multiple historical snapshots of the document like WM retains. So you're looking at maybe 20 bn docs, 4 Kb each. 100 Tb, before compression.

True, but then Google doesn't just download the page source and index that. They run JavaScript in some cases to get to the actual content. This must come at a significant cost. Their index is enormous as well:

"The Google Search index contains hundreds of billions of web pages and is well over 100,000,000 gigabytes in size."

https://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/search/howsearchworks/how-...

Doesn't mean you have to be as big as Google to do something useful of course.

Re: Kagi raises $670k

#174

Post by TradingPlaces »

function_seven wrote: post #41

I had to read the headline twice. At first I read it as $670 million, and I was very sad. That’s “VCs gonna enshittify it in 3 years” money. But then I saw the “K” and grinned. This is proper bootstrap money, and makes me hopeful that Kagi will stay close to its original mission. Congrats. I am really pulling for you, Vlad.

Nice, Vlad. Keep up the good work!

Re: Kagi raises $670k

#175

Post by marginalia_nu »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #173
marginalia_nu wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A search engine doesn't index the HTML code. You're looking at a few Kb per document. You also don't need multiple historical snapshots of the document like WM retains. So you're looking at maybe 20 bn docs, 4 Kb each. 100 Tb, before compression.

True, but then Google doesn't just download the page source and index that. They run JavaScript in some cases to get to the actual content. This must come at a significant cost. Their index is enormous as well: "The Google Search index contains hundreds of billions of web pages and is well over 100,000,000 gigabytes in size." https://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/search/howsearchworks/how-... Doesn't mean you have to be…

Sure, download and run the javascript, but then you can snapshot the DOM, grab the text, and discard all the rest. The HTML and js is of little practical value for the index after that point.

Google's index is likely very large because they don't have any real economic incentives to keeping it small.

Re: Kagi raises $670k

#176

Post by sumedh »

imiric wrote: post #80
sph wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They reach the top of HN front page. Because I've never heard of Neeva before, but I'm a Kagi paying user.

That's hardly a relevant criteria. HN consists of a niche audience of technical users already interested in startups and search technology. The real criteria is whether Kagi will be able to scale beyond a niche market, and establish a sustainable mainstream business. OP's question is valid, but it can't be answered by outsider speculation. Hopefully someone from Kagi is able to address it. This investment is a good s…

> HN consists of a niche audience of technical users already interested in startups and search technology.

Isnt that how firefox got popular, techies started to use it and then convinced others to switch. Of Course in the end it was no match against Google marketing for Chrome.

Re: Kagi raises $670k

#177

Post by Sakos »

throwaway290 wrote: post #157
Sakos wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's relevant because they aren't just VC bros or Saudis. It's just 670k. I'm not sure why you're so worked up about it or why you think Kagi shouldn't get additional funding.

I think a good transparent business is funded by users and/or is publicly traded. This stuff makes me cautious.

You think being publicly traded would be better? That just gives a business perverse incentives detached from the quality of the business's products/services.

Re: Kagi raises $670k

#178

Post by fho »

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…

Have you tried kagi? Because I have and it is pretty good. I was sold when they summarized several "listicles" (ie your typical Top10 blog spam) into one concise listing. "Yes these results would pop up for your search ... but you probably don't want to look at them".

Re: Kagi raises $670k

#179

Post by snielson »

coopykins wrote: post #23

I'm a happy customer, so good for them. One thing I started to use a lot since they removed the usage limit is their summarizer. I made a little bookmarklet to quickly see a summary of the current page I'm browsing: https://gist.github.com/Julioevm/68275ea1324046caedfdfb2ba0e...

Thanks for this! The summarizer is great for quickly getting the gist of legal cases.

Re: Kagi raises $670k

#180

Post by YetAnotherNick »

dns_snek wrote: post #141
pixeladed wrote: post #53

Neeva - cofounded by an ex-Google exec also provided a paid search experience with similar features. They have since shut down and in their blog post pointed out that the issue they faced was not convincing people that they should pay for search but rather the fact that distribution of their service is difficult (i.e. being browser defaults, at work, on people's phones). What's Kagi doing differently to be able to su…

> What's Kagi doing differently to be able to succeed? Define success? It outperforms every other search engine in terms of quality of results and at least from what I understand, they're not too far off from breaking even on their salaries. Neeva was a VC funded abomination and it showed, they even had deals with "big brand" companies like LastPass to offer bundles, but their core product sucked. Neeva search result…

> Define success?

Its not hard to define success. It means having more revenue than their cost, and paying all employees market rate salary(including the founder himself).

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