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Kagi search and Orion browser enter public beta

blog.kagi.com

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Re: Kagi search and Orion browser enter public beta

#191

Post by alecthomas »

richardsocher wrote: post #126
sph wrote: post #9

I've been evaluating Kagi for a couple weeks, I'm liking it, but today I'm completely sold. I've been doing a niche, technical search this morning: trying to figure out if Emacs and TRAMP can be made to work with flatpak-spawn. Google returned a ton of unrelated posts and I had to tell it to stop ignoring my search terms. Kagi returned the only relevant page: a comment on a Github issue that Google wasn't able to fin…

https://you.com/search?q=f%20Emacs%20and%20TRAMP%20can%20be%... looks very strong too. github issue is the top results also. would love to hear what you think. we're focused especially on developers.

I like the UX, but the results are full of content farms and weird ranking for the query "golang parser" (https://you.com/search?q=golang+parser). OTOH it is much faster than kagi.

First result is good: pkg.go.dev/go/parser

Second result looks like a content farm: golangdocs.com/golang-parser-package

Third result looks like a valid Chinese search result, but it's a duplicate of the first result and also _very_ weird that it would rank that highly: golang.cm/pkg/go_parser.htm

Then the next two results are content farms: golangexample.com/tag/parser/ golangexample.com/a-dead-simple-parser-package-for-go/

Then a valid result from a low-starred GH project: github.com/prataprc/goparsec

Then a good result: blog.gopheracademy.com/advent-2014/parsers-lexers/

Then a random seemingly unrelated academic paper: www.arxiv.org/abs/1505.08075

Then a valid result from a high-starred GH project: github.com/alecthomas/participle

Then another content farm: awesomeopensource.com/projects/golang/parser

kagi also has a bunch of the content farms, but the ranking is better IMO. Good luck!

Re: Kagi search and Orion browser enter public beta

#193

Post by jpalomaki »

5evOX5hTZ9mYa9E wrote: post #160

I've been using Kagi for about three weeks and the experience has been excellent. I think I reverted to Google maybe twice, and for many searches Kagi has been simply better. Despite all of this, 10 bucks a month is a tough sell to me. I understand the cost structure, and I am not saying that this product is not something worth paying for, because it is. It feels like the golden age of Google, and that's what I've be…

I agree, it's very hard to get me to subscribe to anything, but Kagi managed to do it.

I think the business model can be pretty good, if you are just aiming to build a sustainable business and not a billion dollar venture.

It might be useful for Kagi to look into business/family model that 1Password has. If you have the 1Password business account, you also get the family subscription. One could argue it makes sense for company to pay for Kagi since taking away the ads from the result page makes people more focused on the task and boosts productivity.

Re: Kagi search and Orion browser enter public beta

#194

Post by Fidelix »

I'm not that interested in paying to protect my data (I think that battle is forever lost).

But the results are simply way better than anything else I've tried. It was probably one of the easiest purchasing decisions I ever made. I really don't understand the comments about this being expensive from HackerNews folks, who I assume use search quite a bit.

Just do some math, check how long you spend looking for stuff with google, dealing with SEO spam, unable to blacklist domains (and even if you do it client-side, you need to constantly keep updating your list), lost time due to not being easy to perform language-specific searches (with kagi, my other languages are a dropwdown away).

Then factor in the amount you spend frustrated with other more subjective things. One thing that bothers me is the political bias of the results (among other things), piracy censorship, etc, but for you it might be something else.

If I had to ask something from Kagi, though, is to be careful about this part from their FAQ:

> Some results from traditional sources will reflect biases

This concept of favouring "traditional sources" (authoritative sources in google language) is a major red flag for me. But I'm not sure this is what your FAQ means. If I noticed anything too overt like I do with google, I would drop kagi the second another alternative with the same search quality shows up.

Overall, thank you for building a great product and service. I am recommending kagi to everyone I know.

Re: Kagi search and Orion browser enter public beta

#195

Post by foofoo4u »

I've tried Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Brave Search. I desperately want a better privacy-centric search engine. But nothing could ever give me results as good as Google. Then several months ago I heard about a pilot for Kagi. I decided to give it a shot. I would have to say that I am very satisfied. The results consistently show me what I seek. I haven't seen any reason to revert back to Google now. I have decided to pay the monthly fee to support this effort further. Here's a small list of why I like Kagi:

- Ad free - Ability to apply lenses to my results. - I have the ability to rank certain sights as low or higher priority. - I have the ability to outright block certain domains! - I love the "Discussions" lens. Makes it easy to find results exclusively from forums, reddit, and the like.

Re: Kagi search and Orion browser enter public beta

#196

Post by pt_PT_guy »

freediver wrote: post #175
ls15 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't. It is meant for prepaid models, which is kind of a feature for me.

Oh OK. Changing model to pay per use is something we thought of but most people told us they would feel anxiety to search and preferred a fixed monthly fee. We are continuing to have an open discussion about this in Discord, our site and here on HN so lets see if we figure it out.

agreed. I would start to be paranoid making searches at will if I knew they are paid one by one

Re: Kagi search and Orion browser enter public beta

#197

Post by gavinmckenzie »

freediver wrote: post #116
lumost wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that your estimate of google search infrastructure costs may be high by 1-2 orders of magnitude. Have you considered what the cost would be if the external APIs were in-housed? As an early-stage startup, you likewise are paying extra for compute, and expedient but often inefficient systems. Is there a path to a <$5/mo unlimited plan? IIRC Google made less than $10 per year per user up until the mid 2010s.

You are probably right if we disregard the 20 years of cap-ex investments Google made into having that infrastructure. In order to in-house this we would probably need to own $500M-$1B worth of infrastructure at the very least (web is vast). Yes then the cost per search would be lower. Maybe it will sound strange, but I do not think of our goal as optimizing for growth and number of users. It is to optimize for susta…

This strategy of not focusing on growth is key to my interests. For example, I’ve been a customer of Fastmail since they launched maybe 20 years ago. And I’ve got my family and many colleagues using Fastmail. It is a paid email service.

Could I use any of the “free” email services like GMail (or back in the day, Yahoo)? Of course. But Fastmail does one thing and they do it well, and I don’t have to worry about them analyzing my emails and selling ads to me. I am willing to pay for that.

Please stay focused. I just tried Kagi today and I’m incredibly surprised at how fantastic the search results are. I never thought I would pay for a search engine but here I am.

Re: Kagi search and Orion browser enter public beta

#198

Post by spurgu »

ziml77 wrote: post #58

Been using Kagi for a few months now and, unlike when I used DDG, it's rare that I feel the need to fall back to Google. I guess now is where we see if Kagi's model can actually work. Will people pay money for a search engine when all other major players in the space don't transact with users in cash? I definitely hope for their success!

> Been using Kagi for a few months now and, unlike when I used DDG, it's rare that I feel the need to fall back to Google.

Yup, the only queries I turn to Google for nowadays are for non-English.

Re: Kagi search and Orion browser enter public beta

#199

Post by richardsocher »

spurgu wrote: post #198
ziml77 wrote: post #58

Been using Kagi for a few months now and, unlike when I used DDG, it's rare that I feel the need to fall back to Google. I guess now is where we see if Kagi's model can actually work. Will people pay money for a search engine when all other major players in the space don't transact with users in cash? I definitely hope for their success!

> Been using Kagi for a few months now and, unlike when I used DDG, it's rare that I feel the need to fall back to Google. Yup, the only queries I turn to Google for nowadays are for non-English.

I guess Google is the backend so that makes sense but how about weather, stocks, short translations, directions, etc?

Re: Kagi search and Orion browser enter public beta

#200

Post by spurgu »

richardsocher wrote: post #199
spurgu wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Been using Kagi for a few months now and, unlike when I used DDG, it's rare that I feel the need to fall back to Google. Yup, the only queries I turn to Google for nowadays are for non-English.

I guess Google is the backend so that makes sense but how about weather, stocks, short translations, directions, etc?

For example weather ("weather ") didn't work when I was starting to use Kagi but now it works.

Unsure about stocks/translations/directions, how do you use them with Google?

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