Kagi: A Premium Search Engine • Hacker News Board

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#191

Post by freediver » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 9:12 PM UTC

Pamar wrote: post #96

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…

Congratulations for what you accomplished so far. Question: I have a little "vanity website" of my oen. Is there a way to make sure it gets included (in full or maybe just some pages) in Kagi searches?

Check Teclis [1], this is a demo front to one of our noncommercial indexes, and if your site is such, you can submit it there.

[1] http://teclis.com

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#192

Post by karmelapple » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 9:20 PM UTC

scelerat wrote: post #189

Is this Kagi in any way related to the defunct payment processor which used to bear the same URL? https://tidbits.com/2016/08/04/kagi-shuts-down-after-falling...

Doesn’t seem like it. I didn’t see any reference to it on the website, either, but the last time this appeared on HN I was hoping someone would ask.

Since I haven’t seen the co-founder mention it, I hope he might make a little Easter egg or add it to the FAQ somewhere to pay homage to Kagi. That company made me my first money as a teenager with software.

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#193

Post by _8j50 » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 9:27 PM UTC

freediver wrote: post #190

_8j50 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool product. If I was in your innovation team you know what idea I would suggest? Adversarial compatibility! Support indexing internal stuff for enterprises. Let's say I have a kagi enterprise account and my company had integrations setup. When I search for something, I would get results from internal wiki, email , sharepoint, etc... along with internet results. One stop shop for search. I hope you read this and giv…

> You wanna kill google? This is how! We don't want to kill Google :) Google serves a purpose in the world and it did help enable the modern society to exist, with all its marvels and flaws. Heck, it even enables Kagi to exist! Think of Kagi as a small premium brand, providing a very different search experience. Enterprise search is something that we are remotely thinking about, but frankly we want to focus on provid…

Thanks for the reply. I am glad you are focused on the mission at hand. I hope you will prove a profitable ad-free search engine is feasible . If you're not going to kill google, at least I hope you humble them by having better quality.

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#194

Post by Melatonic » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 9:29 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…

I agree - I like the idea and so far have liked the beta. But $10 a month is way too much unless there is something that really makes it THAT much better than other search engines. Look at NextDNS for example - they offer it for free under a certain amount of queries and for home use unlimited is 2$ a month. And it has a lot of features, easy and clean interface, plus custom options. I gladly pay for that because its cheap and I can use it with devices off my home network.

$10 a month is getting into the territory of streaming video services and those require a hell of a lot of bandwidth and infrastructure to maintain.

For business or corporate use though $10 a month / user seems totally applicable.

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#195

Post by Melatonic » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 9:31 PM UTC

_8j50 wrote: post #188

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…

Cool product. If I was in your innovation team you know what idea I would suggest? Adversarial compatibility! Support indexing internal stuff for enterprises. Let's say I have a kagi enterprise account and my company had integrations setup. When I search for something, I would get results from internal wiki, email , sharepoint, etc... along with internet results. One stop shop for search. I hope you read this and giv…

This is a great idea and lets face it - enterprise subscriptions are where the real money is at.

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#196

Post by Melatonic » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 9:33 PM UTC

spurgu wrote: post #159

aemreunal wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)!

Love NextDNS as well - my only gripe with it is that I cant have separate filters and lists for different sets of devices. Would love to have my family on some more basic security and privacy stuff while keeping the advanced and higher false positive based stuff for my devices.

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#197

Post by gcanyon » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 9:43 PM UTC

pb7 wrote: post #167

skinkestek wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What makes you think you can do better than a company with over 20 years experience, 10s of 1000s of engineers working on their product? I've tested it since December. What made them think they could do it I don't know but they already outclass Google by a wide margin. The shortest and most precise explanation I can give is: Kagi is to mainstream search engines today what Google was to mainstream search engines 20…

>DDG still isn't anywhere near peak Google quality and yet they've seen (actual) exponential growth for years. Google gets the total of DDG's lifetime searches (over a decade's worth) in about half a week. "Exponential growth" is overselling it.

Maybe they’re using “exponential” metaphorically to mean “a lot”. But if they’re using “exponential” literally, then maybe the exponent is 1.03.

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#198

Post by freediver » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 9:47 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…

There is I think one distinction in the analogy to be made. We shall not put the sign of equation between services offered by Kagi and Google, because we are not for example doing the same for Netflix and Youtube.

One may pay Netflix because there are _specific_ shows that they can not get anywhere else, or simply because the quality and convenience is much higher than if they tried to watch those or other shows in different ways, including free.

In similar fashion, Kagi offers a completely different product/search experience to Google, with different results, different features and attention to detail like you would expect from a premium service obsessed with user experience. Saying that Google is offering same thing like Kagi but for free, is ignoring this nuance and is same as saying that all streamed video content is the same, or that every comedy show is the same.

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#199

Post by Melatonic » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 9:49 PM UTC

Semaphor wrote: post #83

gostsamo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-censorship is the behavior where one does not perform certain searches because their interest in the topic will become known to others. This might include health information, sexual interests, political views or other sensitive topics. The fact that the search engine has your name, address, and payment info means that they can associate you with 100% certainty to everything you search for which can have negative…

I pinged their devs, especially regarding their location. I’d assume US as that’s where their founder is according to his personal website [0], but I agree it would be better to have that information there. Thanks for the explanation. I can only repeat that I don’t think this is solvable. Unlike Signal, which uses E2E this is not possible here, so whatever promises Kagi makes will always have to stay promises as they…

Could potentially go the Mulvad approach and allow mailing in of cash for an anonymous user ID (numbers only) and then you enforce DoT and DoH everywhere? Kagi itself would still have access to your search queries and could identify you buy your public IP but it would be a decent step in the right direction

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#200

Post by Melatonic » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 9:51 PM UTC

deanc wrote: post #7

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…

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…

The problem I have is that Google is not optimizing for the best results - they are optimizing for homogeneous "best" results for the average person. And a lot of that comes down to optimizing for showing product placements (even if they are not ads) and difficulty filtering out garbage paperclip sites and repetitive blogs and whatnot. It used to be that I could fine tune my google searches using just quotes or other simple "advanced" methods and get great results but that has significantly decreased as the years have gone by. If I search for a string in quotes I dont want google automatically "suggesting" I meant something else and then I have to click another button that I am "sure" I meant my original terms.