301–310 of 341 posts
I just used DuckDuckGo with filter, and it worked as expected (i.e., the filter still correctly filters). E.g., search query: t-shirts -site:amazon.com
Yes, according to the linked diff, that is the only remaining filter.
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There are 10x the customers who don't have any idea about these search operators, and sometimes accidentally include one, and are dissatisfied with the results. Companies can't help but cater to the 10x bigger market. They probably spend money less carefully too, so are more valuable to advertisers. I don't attribute any malice to this kind of thing. I just expect that if a project or product is trying to be more eas…
> There are 10x the customers who don't have any idea about these search operators, and sometimes accidentally include one, and are dissatisfied with the results but then they could disable them by default, and users can enable them in the settings ? Removing them entirely just makes the product worse.
Adding options isn't free. If you drop a feature you can delete the code and stop testing it. It you make it an option instead, you need to maintain and test two features instead of one, even though one is only used by a tiny minority of users. If you have N binary options that creates a total of 2^N different configurations. If the features are perfectly orthogonal you only need to test N+1 things, but in reality, features may interact in unexpected ways, and you may have to test a significant subset of 2^N combinations to make sure you've covered all real-world scenarios.
And you will still get confused users. “Why does Bob get different results than me? Are you profiling me?” Alice complains, forgetting that she had turned a feature on/off in the options. etc.
That doesn't mean you should never add any options: many products require a certain amount of configurability to adapt to different user needs. But there is a cost to adding features, and a product manager should carefully consider the pros and cons. If “just make it an option” is your answer to everything you will end up with an unmaintainable product that is likely to confuse the majority of users.
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> Didn't they also have some kind of censorship uproar back in the day? They recently down-ranked Russian propaganda-linked sites (like RT). I can't remember if that change has remained in place or they reversed it.
Oh right I remember now - I guess the point I'd make about that is I'd think there's a large overlap between those that are privacy-conscious and those that are conscious to those kinds of algorithmic manipulations. I don't think toeing the line is a viable business strategy when your competition blows your search result quality out of the water. There's no benefit in that case.
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In that case, you really can't use any hosted search engine because they could be logging all your queries, the time you made them, and associating them with your IP and any other information they can get their hands on. Are you familiar with any search engine that is technically incapable of logging your IP???
You can use a privacy-focused VPN like Mullvad to conceal your identity from the search engine. In most markets having a credit/debit card requires personal information so there's nothing you can do if they don't provide a privacy-friendly payment alternative. Anyway, GP's question was simply: "Can I use Kagi without linking any real-world identifiers (including credit card details) to my search queries in any way?"…
For the record, I'm signed up for Kagi with a disposable email, though I didn't bother to anonymize my payment.
I debated bringing up Kagi at the top level here, since I already commented on it in a reply, but honestly I really want them to succeed and shit like this is why. It's a paid search service, and I'm honestly really happy with that distinction and what it entails. Being paid means that they can deliver on and support features that users can use to get the best results for them, without worrying how those features may…
I moved to Kagi for this feature. I think that if a search engine does not offer this kind of feature, it does not have the user experience as a priority.
This was after getting tired of using "!g" in all my DDG searches because the results were so bad (and with so many "junk" sites).
My experience with both DDG, which I use as default, and Google, which I use as backup has been steadily deteriorating over time. That is the opposite of what you would expect if incentives and business models around this most basic utility were not broken. If people can build collectively incredibly useful resources like wikipedia and openstreetmap why not an index of the web as a public good that is devoid of the r…
Kinda is like that already
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I'd like to be warned before hitting a hard limit, in whichever way. E.g. warning emails ("You've reached 80% of your quota"), or a meter on the search page. From a higher POV, I like GPT-4's smaller time windows way better (x queries within 4 hour window). I hate to be "locked out" of search for a whole week. A few hours wouldn't feel that bad.
You can set your own notices in Kagi and you are never locked out of searching (as you can adjust limits yourself). We do not plan to invest more in these features as we'd like to walk towards the world where we can remove limits again.
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I’ve been using Kagi for multiple months and due to advocacy I made few people pay for it too, but I’m completely disheartened by their business model. The whole explanation of the recent “we want to stay afloat” was weird, unexpected (price doubling with my usage, to 20$/mo) and felt untrue (ordinary user doing 30 searches per day?). I felt like it was written by Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler - made sense but also very…
> I make 200-500 searches per day That's a lot compared to my modest 20 searches a day on average. So I'd guess you're an outlier, since I do sit within their "30 searches a day" claim. I use Kagi on desktop while working, and on mobile outside of work. I've never hit my 1k searches/mo limit, but was honestly worried I would (and set hard limits to not exceed my limits). I guess I don't search as much as I thought I…
An leisure example - I was checking various fidget toys. My ~10 minutes "research" took 15 queries like: "spring toy", "fidget stick", "worry beads", "kendama", "baoding balls" etc. (on topic: infinity cube is quite cool)
Another one would be preparing instrument study sheet with around 20 music instrument where I searched both for images & audio (~50 searches) - e.g. "acoustic guitar sound sample" & "acoustic guitar".
Those are simple, professionally I sometimes go quite wide to find hook point and then dig from there. 20-40 queries spread across various search engines.
I am aware that I'm outlier, yet thinking about usage in this case is a mistake for me.
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> There are 10x the customers who don't have any idea about these search operators, and sometimes accidentally include one, and are dissatisfied with the results but then they could disable them by default, and users can enable them in the settings ? Removing them entirely just makes the product worse.
I take it you don't have real world experience with product management? Adding options isn't free. If you drop a feature you can delete the code and stop testing it. It you make it an option instead, you need to maintain and test two features instead of one, even though one is only used by a tiny minority of users. If you have N binary options that creates a total of 2^N different configurations. If the features are…
So a hypothetical expert.ddg.gg wouldn't be out of character for them
I am aware that there is a slight nuance here between what one may consider just theming of the frontend versus potentially changing how query syntax works, but I just wanted to point out that DDG has embraced UX-flags-via-domain-name which would be in-your-face different from some secret toggle on a settings page
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These are the early days of paid search. Kagi laucnhed less than a year ago, after 25 years of humanity being "massaged" with the idea that it is OK for your searches (arguable both the most important and most intimate thing you do online) to be paid by someone else, an unknown 3rd party, usually an advertiser. The early resistance towards a paid model is to be expected. But if we can learn from the example of YouTub…
It's not paid vs free, it's $120/year versus $300/year.