Most promoted and blocked domains among Kagi Search users • Hacker News Board

Re: Most promoted and blocked domains among Kagi Search users

#361

Post by Gareth321 » Sat, Aug 05, 2023, 11:05 AM UTC

abtinf wrote: post #305

S201 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The single biggest deficiency of Kagi is Apple’s exclusive control over the list of selectable default search providers in iOS Safari. Seems like a deficiency of Apple products to me. I know it's beating a dead horse, but this is what happens when people willingly buy into a closed system they have no control over.

Yup. My guess is all the search providers in the list are paying Apple to be there. Kagi will never make the list.

I have the same hunch. Google pays Apple $20B annually to be the default search engine. Thankfully those of us in the EU will soon be able to choose any search engines we like once the DMA comes into effect.

Re: Most promoted and blocked domains among Kagi Search users

#362

Post by vjerancrnjak » Sat, Aug 05, 2023, 11:07 AM UTC

karaterobot wrote: post #82

Pinterest was certainly the first site I blocked. I've never understood the hate for w3schools. No, it's not MDN, but it's not offensively bad either, and it's been a helpful reference from time to time. If w3schools comes up first in a search, I trust that it probably has the answer to whatever very simple question I must have asked, unlike something like Pinterest, which will just be spam no matter what.

I barely see Pinterest in search results .

Re: Most promoted and blocked domains among Kagi Search users

#363

Post by o1y32 » Sat, Aug 05, 2023, 11:08 AM UTC

nottorp wrote: post #295

Dah00n wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all HN users are US tech employees though. How much US$25 is differs a lot.

2 Starbucks lattes i think? Elsewhere the lattes are much cheaper though. Common problem with a lot of SaaS offerings. I made a Kagi account when they had a free tier, thinking I'll test and then decide on paying or not. Then they dropped the free tier and with the # of trial searches limited, I'd need to make a conscious effort to use it to test instead of just trying it when DDG fails me, which was the initial plan…

Not everyone has the same spending habits. I (in the US) happen to know that none of my colleagues buy Starbucks or any other shop coffee on a regular basis. Although we are paid a decent (although not high) salary and can easily afford this without thinking, I don't see people eagerly spend $25/month on this.

Not to mention $25 is very different in other countries.

Re: Most promoted and blocked domains among Kagi Search users

#364

Post by raphman » Sat, Aug 05, 2023, 11:09 AM UTC

hairofadog wrote: post #222

Nextgrid wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pinterest is a successful product that provides value to its users (I'm not the target market and I guess most of us aren't either, but there is a segment of people that do get value out of it). I don't believe they have any malicious intent to explicitly go out of their way to ruin image search. I'm sure they don't mind the free SEO but I don't believe there is an explicit effort to mislead search engine crawlers (e…

The thing about Pinterest is that it seems to be offering something that it never delivers. A few years ago I was doing an image search and I was like, fine, I’ll sign up, I just want to see this image I’m looking for so I went through the whole process and they still wouldn’t show me the image I wanted to see. Have you ever had one of those dreams where you’re trying to run forward but you’re not getting anywhere? T…

Reminds me of the Warez sites around 1995 - 2000. Searching for "Photoshop 5 crack" or similar would lead you to a web site that would ask you to click on another link which would open a dozen popup windows. Many of those popups would also purport to have what you were looking for - just click on this link here (which opens a load of further popups). Teenage me spent too much time wading through these pages. To this day, I'm not sure whether any of these sites really had warez or whether they were just a huge clickbait mazes.

Re: Most promoted and blocked domains among Kagi Search users

#365

Post by danpalmer » Sat, Aug 05, 2023, 11:10 AM UTC

This seems like a useful feature, but from looking at the data it suggests a strong bias towards a few disciplines. That makes me wonder whether this is just the marketing so far, or a more fundamental limitation on the market that will actually draw value from Kagi. Does Kagi work as a business if it doesn’t grow to millions of users?

Re: Most promoted and blocked domains among Kagi Search users

#366

Post by mezobeli » Sat, Aug 05, 2023, 11:10 AM UTC

Great product from a great team! Pretty expensive for non-casual searching, I do a lots of searches in a day. Currently self-hosted SearchXNG does the trick but would love to start use Kagi for all. Would love if they manage to find ways to increase limits or reduce pricing. We can use uBlock for ads + ddg for results, but for masses and in general for healthier search engines I would be happy to use Kagi daily.

Re: Most promoted and blocked domains among Kagi Search users

#367

Post by smallerfish » Sat, Aug 05, 2023, 11:13 AM UTC

danpalmer wrote: post #365

This seems like a useful feature, but from looking at the data it suggests a strong bias towards a few disciplines. That makes me wonder whether this is just the marketing so far, or a more fundamental limitation on the market that will actually draw value from Kagi. Does Kagi work as a business if it doesn’t grow to millions of users?

It does. They have a lean team, and I believe are bootstrapped.

Re: Most promoted and blocked domains among Kagi Search users

#368

Post by raincole » Sat, Aug 05, 2023, 11:17 AM UTC

naillo wrote: post #360

int_19h wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and historically those code demos were often wrong in many important ways (like not working in all browsers, or insecure). They are much better now but reputation is hard to recover.

That must have been like 12 years ago or more at least because in my career I don't have much memory of feeling betrayed by the information on their site.

It's exactly 12 years ago. I started learning JavaScript in summer 2011 and I remember w3school was often misleading.

Re: Most promoted and blocked domains among Kagi Search users

#369

Post by version_five » Sat, Aug 05, 2023, 11:18 AM UTC

rchaud wrote: post #193

pokeymcsnatch wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a paid service and all their competitors are 'free'. Enshittification doesn't fit their business model, they'd go under in a heartbeat.

Cable TV didn't use to have ads, until somebody figured out you could charge the customer and have other streams of revenue as well. For Kagi, it's a matter of when, not if. Capitalism guarantees it.

As long as they don't take outside investment that's not a certainly. People complain about the prices but it's charging the real cost that let's them be able to offer something good without mortgaging the future.

I concede that if they got big enough, someone would come with enough money that they couldn't refuse, and buy them to try and "unlock vale" by racing to the bottom.

Re: Most promoted and blocked domains among Kagi Search users

#370

Post by oktoberpaard » Sat, Aug 05, 2023, 11:18 AM UTC

slaw wrote: post #221

abtinf wrote: post #105

Every time Kagi comes up, a lot of folks say it is too expensive. That it should be unlimited. That if it was just $x per month, then it would be worth it. That they feel uncomfortable about the limits. I will simply say that I cannot imagine going back to being a “user” of a “search provider” over being a paying Kagi customer. It is the single most critical service I worry about losing. If they octupled the price to…

I don't see any people say Kagi is too expensive, where do you find them? I don't use Kagi as I found it useless. It is only UI for Google search. Yandex and Bing works better than Kagi.

I've become a paid Kagi subscriber because DDG (UI for Bing search, as you would call it) didn't cut it for me. One of the most annoying things was that it often ignored a crucial part of my search query and only delivered very generic results. What kind of searches do you do and in what language(s)?