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Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

kagi.com

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Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#211
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hmm, what do you mean? I have a number of different profiles, all with unique settings (lists). It's to the right of the NextDNS logo in the UI as a dropdown. Then in the client you choose which profile you want to connect to.

I guess for the most part I am not using any the clients - I just point my home router DNS, my Android operating system DNS, and any browsers that might bypass. I erroneously assumed those profiles could only be chosen if the client was being used but it looks like I may actually be able to create different profiles and then still just point the devices network settings to the correct IP. Too bad for "LinkedIP" they dont let you manually specify (it looks like you have to click the button while you are on a machine using the network you want to link)

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the sentiment and I can certainly understand it. This is of course what I thought too in the beginning, but as curiosity and then determination led one thing to another, we learned that things are doable, as much as that sounded as science fiction. Certainly there is evidence in user feedback that, at least for some people, Kagi is decent at what it does. The fundamental premise that enables it is the fo…

Towards that end, I wonder if you could partner with or incorporate some of the things Marginalia is doing. https://search.marginalia.nu/

I do plan on offer some sort of API access, but I just haven't had the time to work out the details yet. In general I do believe in collaboration within the alt-search space, but I'm a bit reluctant to have my non-profit work end up being the back-end for someone else's for-profit operation. Still thinking about it.

In part I've been postponing this because I'm planning a bigger overhaul of rate limiting and access stuff, in part to get rid off cloudflare because I don't want a creepy MITM spying on my users if it isn't absolutely necessary.

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#215
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, what do you mean? I have a number of different profiles, all with unique settings (lists). It's to the right of the NextDNS logo in the UI as a dropdown. Then in the client you choose which profile you want to connect to.

I guess for the most part I am not using any the clients - I just point my home router DNS, my Android operating system DNS, and any browsers that might bypass. I erroneously assumed those profiles could only be chosen if the client was being used but it looks like I may actually be able to create different profiles and then still just point the devices network settings to the correct IP. Too bad for "LinkedIP" they…

Hmm yeah I was actually also just pointing IP's for a good while[0] until my mobile ISP (4G router) decided to not allow custom DNS to be used, after which I installed the NextDNS app (with DoH or whatever is default) and got rid of that restriction.

[0] I remember I had a cronjob calling a particular custom NextDNS URL regularly, through which I'd like to remember I was able to choose a specific profile

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#217
post #44

There have been a couple of discussions on HN lately [0][1] about the current state of search engine results, be it served by Google, Bing, DDG or other. Also, it seems like there is a lot of work on search engine alternatives as in the case of Kagi and also here [2] to name but a few. Of all alternatives, Kagi seems to be off to a very good start and I personally am a very happy beta user. What I have not seen so fa…

I would say for general purposes (casual everyday searches) - anything between 5$ and 10$ / month would be a good price for me. This is of course dependent on the quality of the results - it has to be a real service and not a marketing platform. Most of the single user licenses for web services like github, dropbox are between 5-10$, so the search engine had better deliver quality results, if it requires payments.

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you solve the issue of self-censorship when the exact identity of a searcher is known? Can you Guarantee the privacy of searches and that you will never sell search history data?

Those are good questions, thank you. I think that a class of people, who ask kind of questions that need absolute guarantee of anonymity (I am thinking terrorists, drug dealers, traffickers etc) are: - Looking for a different thing (because anonymity is not the same as privacy) - Are probably looking at tools that cost much more than Kagi does We are not even interested in serving that market. Having said that: - Kag…

I understand the pedagogical example as a stark contrast, but this choice is immediately turning me off the product. Startups and the companies they grow into have spent decades helping themselves to data to track and identify and write clauses into their policies and terms of use to be able to stockpile behavioral data for a potential future "pivot" if nothing else.

We are living in a world where it is more based in fact to assume that companies will help themselves to this kind of information under a variety of pretenses than that they won't. The only reason people will assume differently is if they trust the company, the product and the people behind it. The policy seems to be doing its part, but trust needs to be built by every conversation with a potential future customer. If the question that pops up is "how can I be anonymous if I pay you each month", the resulting argumentation should not be able to be construed as "we're sorry, but we're not going to help be your burner phone", which the comment I'm replying to is toeing dangerously close to.

People search for many things and it could detail their interests, their current location, their financial troubles. The commitment needs to be "we will never, never, never, ever, do anything like this", and not just "it doesn't make sense for us to do this". Because if someone wanted to build in that sort of tracking, it could "make sense" from a business standpoint to do this in that the data, if collected, has a lot of value on the market.

Even if the incentives are indeed aligned to keep the paying customer pleased, we also need to know that if we do walk away, that at that point there will not possibly be anything left as an artifact that a future buyer could do anything with. This assurance will be most effective if it's rooted in trust and values rather than in practical concerns; the practical concerns are valid, but only if they are restraints that have been applied in search of an objective by yourself, instead of "it is not currently in our business plan". (As an extreme example, consider a bank saying "we'd never pick items out of our customers' safe deposit boxes and sell them; it would simply be too much work".)

Basically, the facts seem reasonable enough. But you need to work on not coming off like the parent saying "well I'm sorry you want to hide things from me", which is what unprompted bringing up the covering up of criminal activity in response to questions of anonymity and privacy does. I understand that those concerns do come up in thinking responsibly about a product like this from all angles, but making it a part of a discussion with a potential customer disrespects and denigrates their fundamental needs enormously, the same needs that would make them attracted to the product in the first place.

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#219
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Look at the graphs.

To me it looks literally exponential until half a year ago.

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you solve the issue of self-censorship when the exact identity of a searcher is known? Can you Guarantee the privacy of searches and that you will never sell search history data?

Those are good questions, thank you. I think that a class of people, who ask kind of questions that need absolute guarantee of anonymity (I am thinking terrorists, drug dealers, traffickers etc) are: - Looking for a different thing (because anonymity is not the same as privacy) - Are probably looking at tools that cost much more than Kagi does We are not even interested in serving that market. Having said that: - Kag…

I would expect 99% of us not wanting our search history revealed or just even logged. Specially with English as a second language, I've searched for things (to learn what they are) that are just horrible, think blue pancake/muffin/whatever it was.

Or just plainly searching about legal or medical issues to learn/get informed can yield some very questionable queries taken out of context as well.

Do you currently log user search queries?

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