Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Kagi Search – Paywalled articles indicator and improved weather widget

kagi.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 258 posts

Re: Kagi Search – Paywalled articles indicator and improved weather widget

#241

Post by xigoi »

llamaInSouth wrote: post #223
gregdoesit wrote: post #31

I've been using Kagi as my default search engine for about 2 months now. I love it, and feel so far that it's well worth the $108 per year: just by not having to spend mental energy to scroll through the first several sponsored results; and try and decide if a result is paid or not. I set Kagi to be my default search in my browser (Chrome). For specific searches like stocks, maps or restaurant reviews, I still use th…

I'm surprised how many people here don't use an ad blocker...

An ad blocker can only block sponsored results if they’re marked as sponsored.

Re: Kagi Search – Paywalled articles indicator and improved weather widget

#242

Post by xigoi »

alien_cat wrote: post #52

Perhaps this is not meant for me. I use gpt-4-turbo frequently, which costs only $5 per month. For the same price, if I were to purchase from Kagi, I would need to limit my quota, like using a different search engine for unit conversion or obtaining a simple Raspi pinout. Why design a product that encourages users to use it less? In my opinion, a $5 with limited searches doesn't justify the cost.

GPT is not a search engine, so why would you even compare it to Kagi?

Re: Kagi Search – Paywalled articles indicator and improved weather widget

#243

Post by neurostimulant »

raffraffraff wrote: post #128
chrisandchris wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar here. I didn't know Kagi until, as I remember, there was an article here on HN. I thought too why should I pay for search? Kagi basically won me after I realised I can exclude whole domains from search results - now Pinterest, Stackshare and all those AI-generated content filler sites are gone from my search results. Search results are great and it's just worth it. The only advantage Google so far has IMHO is…

Some other stuff works better at Google, like "train from Heathrow to London" gives you the next 4 trains right there in the results. In fact it can give accurate results, link ups, walking estimates between bus routes, where the official transport app or website sucks (like Dublin buses). Oh and shop opening hours, cinema times etc. Kagi has gotten better at directly providing answers (like 15lbs in kg) but it's sti…

Those are Google Maps features vertically integrated with Google search. Kagi probably won't ever have this feature (unless if they have Kagi Maps in the future?).

Re: Kagi Search – Paywalled articles indicator and improved weather widget

#244

Post by averageRoyalty »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #209
chrisandchris wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar here. I didn't know Kagi until, as I remember, there was an article here on HN. I thought too why should I pay for search? Kagi basically won me after I realised I can exclude whole domains from search results - now Pinterest, Stackshare and all those AI-generated content filler sites are gone from my search results. Search results are great and it's just worth it. The only advantage Google so far has IMHO is…

> I can exclude whole domains from search results Sort of. You can block the domain in the result but not the spammy domain underneath. If you're getting tons of result with gov.ar ( spam1.gov.ar, spam2.gov.ar, spam3.gov.ar ) you have to use up your blocklist for each one. You can't block gov.ar . We can't edit our blocklist directly.

I haven't looked too deep, but kagi does let you regex filter your results[0]. I don't think you can manipulate things to be hidden with this, but it seems trivial. I'm sure you could put in a feature requesr.

0. https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/redirects.html

Re: Kagi Search – Paywalled articles indicator and improved weather widget

#245

Post by colesantiago »

drewbitt wrote: post #215
colesantiago wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mullvad is able to do this without passwords and emails AND it is a paid product that is privacy based. I don't see why Kagi can't do the same.

And it has huge problems with reselling accounts, attacks to randomly guess the username which gives full access to the account, they had to disable port forwarding due to abuse via anonymity, and they enforce a device limit per account due to the above. It does work for them, but at a cost. Kagi is "a company created with the mission to humanize the web. Our goal is to amplify the web of human knowledge, creativity,…

> And it has huge problems with reselling accounts, attacks to randomly guess the username which gives full access to the account, they had to disable port forwarding due to abuse via anonymity, and they enforce a device limit per account due to the above. It does work for them, but at a cost.

Paying for a random generated ephemeral account would be even better for Kagi but as far as I see it now, it's a privacy nightmare.

I recommend Kagi to follow the model what Mullvad has done for making a product privacy preserving while still being able to make money.

Re: Kagi Search – Paywalled articles indicator and improved weather widget

#246

Post by freediver »

strogonoff wrote: post #237
Toutouxc wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they won’t be profitable with their current model. Flat rate won’t cover outliers and abusers They went from "a few tiers + pay-per-use above that" to "one low tier + flat rate unlimited" not long ago, don't you think they a) thought it through and b) are flexible enough with their pricing and profitability?

Quite the opposite: I know they thought this through (thanks to them being quite transparent in their communication[0]), and that their own conclusion was: > the $10 per month unmetered search plan was not financially sustainable for us. This was in March; fast forward a few months and surprise, they offer a $10 per month unmetered search plan. With unmetered LLM usage to boot? I think it is obvious from their own ma…

We did not have any investment money to burn, Kagi was completely bootstrapped until June when we raised a very small amount from our users.

What changed is:

- Price of LLM APIs dropped significantly faster than we anticipated

- Kagi started getting adopted more broadly, which in turn meant more people who do not search as much started using it, lowering our average cost per user

Combination of those two factors made us more comfortable to adapt pricing again and pass all anticipated savings to our members.

Re: Kagi Search – Paywalled articles indicator and improved weather widget

#247

Post by llamaInSouth »

xigoi wrote: post #241
llamaInSouth wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised how many people here don't use an ad blocker...

An ad blocker can only block sponsored results if they’re marked as sponsored.

are those impossible to block?

Re: Kagi Search – Paywalled articles indicator and improved weather widget

#248

Post by strogonoff »

freediver wrote: post #246
strogonoff wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite the opposite: I know they thought this through (thanks to them being quite transparent in their communication[0]), and that their own conclusion was: > the $10 per month unmetered search plan was not financially sustainable for us. This was in March; fast forward a few months and surprise, they offer a $10 per month unmetered search plan. With unmetered LLM usage to boot? I think it is obvious from their own ma…

We did not have any investment money to burn, Kagi was completely bootstrapped until June when we raised a very small amount from our users. What changed is: - Price of LLM APIs dropped significantly faster than we anticipated - Kagi started getting adopted more broadly, which in turn meant more people who do not search as much started using it, lowering our average cost per user Combination of those two factors made…

Thanks for the reply! My concern is with counting on people who do not search a lot to be a big part of your user base. Flat rate means those people might feel like they are overpaying, and if they leave you will start losing money on people who search a lot.

Re: Kagi Search – Paywalled articles indicator and improved weather widget

#249

Post by MrJohz »

xigoi wrote: post #239
MrJohz wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also not sure I quite get the love. I got the free trial, and I've set it as my browser's default search engine for now to get used to using it. The problem for me is that it's at best equivalent to, and at worst a lot poorer than the same search in Google. Which is a shame, because I've been finding Google less and less useful recently. Maybe I need to fiddle around with the settings more, get some better filter…

> it knows that I probably want programming results if I search for "rust" and things like that. If you search for web stuff on Google, how often do you get MDN as the first result?

I don't know about the first result, but I think I get it above the fold at least 70% of the time, which works well enough for me.

Re: Kagi Search – Paywalled articles indicator and improved weather widget

#250

Post by freediver »

strogonoff wrote: post #248
freediver wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We did not have any investment money to burn, Kagi was completely bootstrapped until June when we raised a very small amount from our users. What changed is: - Price of LLM APIs dropped significantly faster than we anticipated - Kagi started getting adopted more broadly, which in turn meant more people who do not search as much started using it, lowering our average cost per user Combination of those two factors made…

Thanks for the reply! My concern is with counting on people who do not search a lot to be a big part of your user base. Flat rate means those people might feel like they are overpaying, and if they leave you will start losing money on people who search a lot.

Being concerned is healthy, there are no worry free businesses.
Post reply on HN