Kagi search and Orion browser enter public beta • Hacker News Board

Re: Kagi search and Orion browser enter public beta

#71

Post by CamelRocketFish » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 1:59 AM UTC

Anunayj wrote: post #69

CamelRocketFish wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even a gym membership?

Ha, I was trying to debate the cost of paying 10$ a month for a subscription like this, and this might have changed the way I look at it. As a developer I wasn't thinking about "how much I am willing to pay for it and how much use I get out of it", I was thinking from a "how much does it cost Kagi" perspective. I do not care much about ads or privacy from Kagi (I use adblock + I won't use kagi for private searches).…

I agree that I think the cost may be worth it. I am a little disappointed that they want to link private searches to an account (which I think they’ll eventually change based on the user feedback they’ll receive).

Re: Kagi search and Orion browser enter public beta

#72

Post by Anunayj » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 2:00 AM UTC

emmo wrote: post #66

Been in the beta for quite a while now and have been thoroughly impressed. Very, very rarely do I have to fall back to Google search (mostly for image search, which can occasionally be a little lacking in Kagi). $10 isn't a small hurdle to get people over, but I really hope you can make it work; I'd love for Kagi to succeed.

Yup! I really like the fact I can just add a !g to go to google. it's small quality of life features that I wish more companies would focus on.

Re: Kagi search and Orion browser enter public beta

#73

Post by kova12 » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 2:03 AM UTC

Here is a concern that I have with kagi... Let's say I want to search for something privately. I can VPN and use private mode, and it would be extremely hard to link that search to me. Definitely not in an NSA style dragnet, someone must be tracking me personally to know what I search for. But with a search engine requiring payment it's super easy to deanonymize everyone in single swoop. And if it can be done, it will be done. Ironically, bing and google can be much more private than this engine if used properly

Re: Kagi search and Orion browser enter public beta

#74

Post by ntoskrnl » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 2:04 AM UTC

thematrixturtle wrote: post #68

freediver wrote: post #4

Founder here, it was quite a journey very excited to be launching beta today with payments. The idea of paying for web search was unimaginable three years ago when we started this. AMA!

Any plans to revisit the pricing? I've in the Kagi beta for months and it's way better than DDG, but it's hard to justify US$120/year when Google is free.

They've already brought it down a lot, the original plan was to charge $30/mo: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30213110

If it really costs them $1 for 80 searches, I don't see how they can bring it much lower. $10 feels like the sweet spot for me.

Re: Kagi search and Orion browser enter public beta

#75

Post by hericium » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 2:06 AM UTC

I have no reasons to doubt privacy statements but it rubs me the wrong way that I'm identifying myself by name to use search engine that's supposed not to track me.

The requirement for an account also makes ad-hoc searching on whatever device/browser/profile tricky.

> You should pay for your search engine to ensure that the incentives of the information provider are aligned with what’s best for you, not what’s best for the advertisers.

DDG tends to show some search term-related ads but those seem quite harmless and aren't loaded from 3rd party sites.

> We care deeply about privacy.

Worthless statement. And quite annoying since most vendors start their privacy policies with similar calming statement which multiple paragraphs later is followed by "we'll give your data to advertisers"

That being said, Kagi looks interesting and I'll consider paying to try it out.

EDIT: media are loaded from AWS and browser sends a kagi_session cookie while grabbing them. kagi.com itself seems to be hosted on GCP. How am I supposed to trust any privacy assurances with this setup?

Re: Kagi search and Orion browser enter public beta

#76

Post by Anunayj » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 2:07 AM UTC

xref wrote: post #70

thematrixturtle wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any plans to revisit the pricing? I've in the Kagi beta for months and it's way better than DDG, but it's hard to justify US$120/year when Google is free.

For certain definitions of “free” spending time scrolling to try and find where the ad results end and my organic results begin is one thing that feels very un-free

yup! If I do a very conservative 40 searches a day, and save 1 second on every search, that will be 20 minutes of time searching saved over a month!. I think that alone might justify the cost for some people.

Re: Kagi search and Orion browser enter public beta

#77

Post by AndroidKitKat » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 2:10 AM UTC

I would really love to use Kagi, but the only thing holding me back is being able to type in my query from the Safari url/omni/mega/awesome/whatever-it-is-called bar. There are hacks to redirect search engines to Kagi but that adds extra waiting time and from my experience removes the ability to fallback to a different search engine. I know that this behavior is one that Apple forbids changes to and that I could get around this by using Orion or a different browser, but I use the Safari Tab Groups feature frequently which AFAIK, Orion does not have.

I did use both products in their closed beta forms, and I genuinely enjoyed using them, but inertia kept me on Apple's browser. Great to see the positivity in the thread!

Edit: it seems they've fixed my gripes with Kagi search in Safari since the last time I used it! Just paid for premium!

Re: Kagi search and Orion browser enter public beta

#78

Post by nine_k » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 2:13 AM UTC

> But it costs us about $1 to process 80 searches.

> At $10/month, the price does not even cover our cost for average use, and we are basically betting that average use will go down a bit with time because during beta people may be searching more than normal

Oh. I'd say that if I switched to Kagi as to the main search engine, I would increase the number of searches I make. And I definitely do many dozens a day. Their reported beta-testers usage is 30 / day. At their current expense level, that would be $116.25 / mo.

I wonder how can this be sustainable. Maybe they expect a large number of paying users who do 2-3 searches a day.

Re: Kagi search and Orion browser enter public beta

#79

Post by xtracto » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 2:17 AM UTC

thematrixturtle wrote: post #68

freediver wrote: post #4

Founder here, it was quite a journey very excited to be launching beta today with payments. The idea of paying for web search was unimaginable three years ago when we started this. AMA!

Any plans to revisit the pricing? I've in the Kagi beta for months and it's way better than DDG, but it's hard to justify US$120/year when Google is free.

Is it really hard to justify? Search is one of the things that I do most on the internet. I use it daily. Google search results are really bad for me: full of SEO spam and github/stackoverflow repeaters, or pinterest crap.

I feel it's like paying for a mattress or an office chair: the time I spend there adds up quickly. $120 a year is a freaking good deal for me.

Re: Kagi search and Orion browser enter public beta

#80

Post by rebeccaskinner » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 2:21 AM UTC

Happily signed up to pay for a year. I've been using Kagi as my main search engine for a while now and they really offer excellent results on top of the pro-privacy stance.