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How I Use Kagi

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Re: How I Use Kagi

#321

Post by lostlogin »

dcow wrote: post #218
GoatInGrey wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cancelled my kagi subscription upon seeing this response. I donate to Ukraine to defend itself from Russia. I lost a family member to Russian artillery as well while providing medical aid to civilians. I very much do not want my dollars to fund the very thing that my donations are intended to defend against. I'm going to assume you run a similar policy with Chinese search providers. After seeing Chinese warships of…

Conversely, Vlad’s strong sense of engaging in ethical business and utmost respect for and understanding of what it means to remain neutral is precisely why I use Kagi, and why I believe Kagi will beat Google in the long run—why I invested in Kagi.

> ethical business

There appears to be a conflict between ethics. Some won’t let a cent of their money go to Russia. Some will as they value their search engine and freedom of information. You and Kagi have picked one over the other.

Re: How I Use Kagi

#322

Post by cosmicgadget »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #315
cosmicgadget wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was pretty explicit about saying that moral consistency is better but there is a valid position that is inconsistent but still aims to reduce human suffering. And that handwaves the equivalence of the US and Russia as well as their relationships with corporations.

You are literally living through a fascist takeover of the United States, and said corporations are happily participating as long as they get a share of the pie. I know that HN is an American website, and it is difficult for people in America to view the US negatively, but outside the US you will find a lot of people that don't really see much difference between Russia attacking Ukraine, and the US bombing the living…

> is difficult for people in America to view the US negatively

You really gotta see past stereotypes and reductive takes. The absence of criticism of the US in a discussion about two different countries doesn't implicitly mean "Amurica o7".

> you will find a lot of people that don't really see much difference between Russia attacking Ukraine, and the US bombing the living fuck out of Afghanistan and Iraq...

Those people need to look a little deeper than "these are/were both voluntary wars". If someone is unwilling to engage beyond the shallowest possible academic level, it's not worth the effort.

> one cannot then turn around and scold others for not engaging in that boycott on a moral basis.

My intent was to defend the people engaging in the boycott. I don't recall scolding people for not participating but perhaps that was implied somewhere. Certainly I have not shied away from condemning Kagi/Yandex/Russia but it's not the same as saying "you should too". In fact, one of my main points has been that ideological inconsistency is okay of not great.

Re: How I Use Kagi

#323

Post by cosmicgadget »

dcow wrote: post #312
cosmicgadget wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, you can’t without being a hypocrite. I literally said this. Please read. > a company that does a minuscule amount of business with a Russian company Should be easy to excise then.

Not if it provides value. And Kagi thinks it does. Please demonstrate or reason that Kagi buying Yandex’s search index (1) does harm and (2) does more harm than good.

It contributes to the Russian economy and oligarchy, both are key drivers of the invasion. People like you love to say Ukraine won't win the war as if the end of the war is going to be on the battlefield.

Re: How I Use Kagi

#324

Post by greazy »

seabass wrote: post #52

I tried to give Kagi a fair shot by using it for a few months. I loved a lot of features, especially the boost/block lists. But I always felt the responses were way too slow for something I use that much. I benchmarked a handful of queries and confirmed they were consistently ~3x slower than Google for normal searches and 5-10x slower for image searches on my home network. I’m sure there are many factors that play in…

I've also experienced this issue. Always assumed it's my network or the connection at work.

Sometimes kagi will take up to ~5 seconds to give me results.

Re: How I Use Kagi

#325

Post by jwr »

freediver wrote: post #85
jwr wrote: post #12

Unfortunately, Kagi works with Russian companies and pays them money, which in my book is a no-no. I do not want any of my money to contribute to the Russian economy in any way, because I know what is happening to people in Ukraine. (I was a Kagi subscriber, no more, because of this)

Kagi founder here. I notice you bring this up consistently in Kagi discussions. A search engine's job is to deliver the best possible results. We evaluate API sources on search quality, not geopolitics. Yandex represents 2% of our costs but contributes meaningfully to search quality - removing it would harm all users while having minimal economic impact. We've used their API since 2019 and evaluate all sources purely…

> you bring this up consistently in Kagi discussions

I do — I disagree strongly with your choices, which is why I cancelled my subscription and why I bring this up. It's doubly sad, because I liked your service.

Re: How I Use Kagi

#327

Post by lostlogin »

dcow wrote: post #298
lostlogin wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d assumed that stopping my subscription didn’t achieve anything. Presumably enough have that it hurts a little.

Or they just don’t want to deal with the bad faith actors with overly amplified internet voices cherrypicking Kagi as the next innocent product to torpedo because they aren’t virtuous enough. You can’t win against crazy people in a mob.

That’s an interesting take.

Another view is that they are losing customers due to this, and have chosen to make the information harder to find.

For company that believes in accurate data above all else, its not a great look.

Re: How I Use Kagi

#328

Post by rpdillon »

radlad wrote: post #314
rpdillon wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's also entirely possible to use a moral stance as just one of many facets of evaluation. Agreed. I'd need to see evidence of that, though. People are lazy, and they hide behind moral stances that are completely impractical to avoid having to think through the complex moral realities of the decisions we make. I don't have a lot of patience for this. If it's part of a multi-faceted analysis, then I'd expect to see…

I've debated replying at all, but I am genuinely perplexed by this comment as a response to the quoted text: > It's not your decision. Your decision is whether or not to pay Kagi for their service. Kagi produces a product that tries to provide the best value, and doesn't surveil you. Did I imply it was my decision? I don't think I did. In fact, I pointed out that I don't even have the data available to me to evaluate…

No contrarianism intended!

I took your musing about the value of removing Yandex as creating a sort of spectrum of hypothetical products that could be offered, and then musing that some hypothetical one would be better than what exists. My point was: we can only select from what exists (or who exists), and then work with them from there. This was intended to tie into a larger theme I'd been trying to emphasize around choosing a product that's closest to your ideal, and then iterating towards perfection from there. The moral-stand approach is to go with free stuff because you don't want to give money to a non-perfect product/company. My assertion is that single-factor approach is something I see regularly, and an approach that leads to suboptimal choices in the long run.

My statement about Kagi was not indended to be someone we'd prove, but rather what the company themselves has stated as their intention, in contrast to their competitors, who don't even try.

Cory Doctrow has written up some findings with respect to how Google search results are intentionally bad. When Kagi uses Google's index via the API (that's paid!) they can produce a better search product than Google does. That's notable!

Assuming you seriously considered Kagi, and have now chosen not to pay them, where have you turned for search?

Re: How I Use Kagi

#329

Post by xk_id »

blitzpoet wrote: post #73

DDG has been solid for me, and I rarely use g! anymore. I certainly can find better things to do with a hundred dollars than spend it on something I don't need and that other services do just as well for free.

That doesn’t mean DDG is anything special, only that Google has become incredibly bad.

Re: How I Use Kagi

#330

Post by xk_id »

It’s so strange to me that I’m now using Google maybe a couple times a month (and then only through a proxy like Mullvad’s leta). This would have been inconceivable 15, even 10 years ago. I don’t want to get too philosophical, but wow, how times change.
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