Kagi finally let me lay Google Search to rest • Hacker News Board

Re: Kagi finally let me lay Google Search to rest

#211

Post by nunez » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 7:13 PM UTC

canttestthis wrote: post #103

archildress wrote: post #17

I really can't make clear enough how good Kagi is. I've tried all the competing emerging search engines as they've had their 5 minutes of fame. They don't compare to kagi. it's the first google rip and replace I've ever tried. Pony up the $10 a month and put your money where your mouth is on "let's pay for products instead of being sold to advertisers."

In my experience outside the niche of tech related content Kagi performed significantly worse than Google. Especially for content that was region specific and not just text natch based, like "children clothing stores in Boston"

This was my experience as well and was the reason why I ultimately quit Kagi (I was on the $10/mo plan). Google is still tops at searching for "non-tech life stuff", much of which is location-dependent.

Towards I end, I found myself comparing Kagi searches against Google because I didn't believe that the results I was getting from Kagi were the best I could get.

I'll try Kagi again once they figure out location-based searching while upholding privacy.

Re: Kagi finally let me lay Google Search to rest

#212

Post by comment0r » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 8:02 PM UTC

chx wrote: post #170

btzs wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have moved my files to a managed Nextcloud instance. Important to me is Linux support and Nextcoud works better for me than the alternatives.

Do you have suggestions for ~2TB at a sane price? For example, https://www.hosting.de/nextcloud/managed-nextcloud/ you can see 2TB costs 2.5x of a 1TB plan.

https://www.hetzner.com/de/storage/storage-share

Re: Kagi finally let me lay Google Search to rest

#213

Post by wutwutwat » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 11:40 PM UTC

temp2022account wrote: post #207

wutwutwat wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyday random things. You’ll have to be my ISP, government, or browser if you want to collect specifics. Hit up Google they’ll sell it to you, just cut me a commission check will ya?

> Everyday random things If your searches are this descriptive then yes, I'd expect useless results everywhere. I use Kagi where Bing used to be, for technical reference lookups. It's excellent at putting API docs front-and-center, which means I can alt-tab back to my text editor that much faster. What I love about Kagi is how little of my time and attention the tool requires. Also my own anecdata - the privacy conce…

> If your searches are this descriptive then yes, I'd expect useless results everywhere

Y'all have a hard on for knowing specifically what I'm searching for, for some reason, don't ya?

I've been a software engineer for over a decade. I'm self taught. I've worked at some of the largest websites in the world. I owe my entire career to my ability to search for shit I don't know and finding results that literally teach me how to program. In a way, I owe my entire career to Google's search results that used to be top notch. The point is, I know how search used to be, and I know now that it sucks complete ass for me. I know how to search for the proper keywords because I wouldn't have my career without it so you should trust me when I say it's not user error, it's the search results, and stop asking for specific search terms when I'm guaranteeing you 100% the issue is not me. If I sucked at searching I wouldn't be on this site typing this message right now, I'd still be working in a factory.

Re: Kagi finally let me lay Google Search to rest

#214

Post by miked85 » Fri, Oct 13, 2023, 12:03 AM UTC

lapcat wrote: post #33

I really wanted to like Kagi, and admittedly my experimentation did not last long, but contrary to the experience of other commenters, I found Kagi search results to be significantly worse than Google. Maybe it was just the specific subjects I was searching. The final straw for me was when I searched for air quality in my city, and the Kagi results were a total joke, mostly irrelevant. I would have been happy to pay…

I've found Kagi results to be significantly better than Google in general, however I'm sure certain searches might better on Google.

Re: Kagi finally let me lay Google Search to rest

#215

Post by krackers » Fri, Oct 13, 2023, 12:19 AM UTC

theshrike79 wrote: post #142

Is Kagi really that good or is their Astroturfing game just next level? I've never heard anyone say anything bad about it - and we're still talking about a $10/month search engine. Something that has been historically free at all times.

Kagi basically just uses google search api, then does some filtering/reranking on top. (They claim to have their own index, but I've never seen it used. I've had better results using Yandex for things that i know exist but google refuses to show). I bet a large part of the perceived quality boost is just from filtering the spammy so-clones, and downranking clickbait sites. But if you're frequently searching for things that google refuses to show (either due to bias, or because they just dropped it from their index) then Kagi won't help much, just use Yandex instead.

Re: Kagi finally let me lay Google Search to rest

#216

Post by andreagrandi » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 12:00 PM UTC

I use Kagi (along with DuckDuckGo) and I really appreciate the quality of their search results, but if you care about privacy do not use their Safari extension.

Due to a Safari limitation, all the queries are leaked to the previously selected default search engine https://kagifeedback.org/d/1575-ios-extension-leaking-search...

In addition to this, since all the search attempts are being redirected to Kagi, you can’t use any other search engine unless you deactivate the extension and this prevents you from trying the same query on different engines.

P.S: as far as I understand, they don’t have much freedom with the implementation and everything would be much easier if Safari allowed to customise the search engines, but I’m not sure this limitation is being properly communicated to the users (unless I missed some warning during extension installation)

Re: Kagi finally let me lay Google Search to rest

#217

Post by andreagrandi » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 1:48 PM UTC

upghost wrote: post #27

I should probably add in that kagi has some secret modes. If you precede the search query with `!expert` you get an LLM search response. If you precede it with `!code` you get a GPT-4-ish tuned response. It’s… really good. And since you can do it from a browser bar if you make it your default browser, I find myself reaching for !expert at least 50% as often as ChatGPT these days. Also, it’s extremely good with citati…

I tried this query: !code how do I invert a string in python

and I was redirected here http://www.searchco.de/?q=how+do+I+invert+a+string+in+python... which doesn't even open (at least on my network)

What's going on here?

Re: Kagi finally let me lay Google Search to rest

#218

Post by mastercheif » Tue, Oct 17, 2023, 7:53 PM UTC

TisButMe wrote: post #163

mastercheif wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve also seen Kagi’s result quality start to decline in the last few months, and I now automatically bang to Google for anything local. My unsourced theory is that they’ve optimized getting their search costs down, at the expense of some edge cases that don’t show up in their KPIs. I’m still a satisfied customer, the product makes me two Starbucks coffees a month happier than I would be still using Google for everyt…

I work at Kagi. We don't have KPIs that track search quality in that way (we don't have any frontend tracking at all, so we can't know if you click any of the results), and we haven't touched much the sources of data we're using over the last few months. We've also had conflicting reports about this problem, so I'm wondering if it's not variable quality over time and place of our upstreams that's a problem. That said…

Appreciate the response and insight. Rooting for you guys, I’ll be sure to submit feedback in the future.

Re: Kagi finally let me lay Google Search to rest

#219

Post by averageRoyalty » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 8:29 PM UTC

nunez wrote: post #211

canttestthis wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience outside the niche of tech related content Kagi performed significantly worse than Google. Especially for content that was region specific and not just text natch based, like "children clothing stores in Boston"

This was my experience as well and was the reason why I ultimately quit Kagi (I was on the $10/mo plan). Google is still tops at searching for "non-tech life stuff", much of which is location-dependent. Towards I end, I found myself comparing Kagi searches against Google because I didn't believe that the results I was getting from Kagi were the best I could get. I'll try Kagi again once they figure out location-based…

That's interesting. What are your use cases for location dependent searches? I rarely do them, but normally they'll be something like 'coffee' or 'Officeworks'. Without thinking conciously though, I open Google Maps for these querie (and did before I used Kagi).

Re: Kagi finally let me lay Google Search to rest

#220

Post by averageRoyalty » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 8:39 PM UTC

ketzo wrote: post #54

So, one meta-layer of discussion up: do we think the recent surge of Kagi discussion on HN is indicative of a real wave? Or is “picking a different search engine” gonna be something only 1% of users ever do again? I honestly think that even if Kagi does remain pretty niche ( serve that niche (so far… mostly HN-user-types, I would bet). But it seems hard to make money at that scale and with a non-advertising business…

> But it seems hard to make money at that scale and with a non-advertising business model. So godspeed Kagi, I guess.

This is a weird take. Most businesses in the world have Too many people seem to be trying to be the next Zuckerberg. A profitable, sustainable business is a lot more appealing to most.