Kagi: A Premium Search Engine • Hacker News Board

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#81

Post by mmoskal » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 10:54 AM UTC

gkasev wrote: post #44

There have been a couple of discussions on HN lately [0][1] about the current state of search engine results, be it served by Google, Bing, DDG or other. Also, it seems like there is a lot of work on search engine alternatives as in the case of Kagi and also here [2] to name but a few. Of all alternatives, Kagi seems to be off to a very good start and I personally am a very happy beta user. What I have not seen so fa…

Interestingly, people are apparently willing to pay $1500 per month to forgo using search engines [0], implying this is what the service is worth to them. I guess here you're asking for price on privacy, as Google is already free to use.

edit: I guess even the range of answers here, compared to implied value of the service, is an indication how much people (me included) value their data.

[0] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/04/25/how-much...

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#82

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 10:54 AM UTC

gostsamo wrote: post #32

freediver wrote: post #3

Founder here. Thanks for submitting it, but I am afraid there is not much to see right now. We are still in closed beta (mostly to control cost and gradually improve user experience), with much more left to do. There are some examples of what Kagi can do in my twitter feed. [1] Main idea of Kagi is to offer a paid search product, where user is also the customer and is central to everything that happens. Btw. Kagi is…

How would you solve the issue of self-censorship when the exact identity of a searcher is known? Can you Guarantee the privacy of searches and that you will never sell search history data?

[deleted]

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#83

Post by Semaphor » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 10:57 AM UTC

gostsamo wrote: post #78

Semaphor wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How would you solve the issue of self-censorship when the exact identity of a searcher is known? What do you mean with that? > Can you Guarantee the privacy of searches and that you will never sell search history data? I think that’s literally impossible to do? FWIW, selling data would probably not be worth it, and ruin them. It’s supposed to be pretty expensive (early discussions are around $10-$20 a month) while…

Self-censorship is the behavior where one does not perform certain searches because their interest in the topic will become known to others. This might include health information, sexual interests, political views or other sensitive topics. The fact that the search engine has your name, address, and payment info means that they can associate you with 100% certainty to everything you search for which can have negative…

I pinged their devs, especially regarding their location. I’d assume US as that’s where their founder is according to his personal website [0], but I agree it would be better to have that information there.

Thanks for the explanation. I can only repeat that I don’t think this is solvable. Unlike Signal, which uses E2E this is not possible here, so whatever promises Kagi makes will always have to stay promises as they’ll need to know the content of your search and for what account it is (as your settings influence the results) to give the right reply. At least that’s how I understand it.

[0]: https://vladimir.prelovac.com/

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#84

Post by karimf » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 10:59 AM UTC

tmsbrg wrote: post #79

It seems the trend lately for new services to be built with rather high monthly fees. From the FAQ: "We plan to offer entry level plans for as low as $10/month, unlimited plan at around $20/mo as well as make bundles (to include Kagi email and other services), family plans and annual payment discounts available." I have to say I support a lot of these initiatives, but I can't help but think altogether they're creatin…

Well, services accessible to as many people as possible? Google, Facebook, Instagram? Is there any possible way to do that without using advertisement as the business model?

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#85

Post by eitland » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 11:01 AM UTC

schleck8 wrote: post #80

tmsbrg wrote: post #79

It seems the trend lately for new services to be built with rather high monthly fees. From the FAQ: "We plan to offer entry level plans for as low as $10/month, unlimited plan at around $20/mo as well as make bundles (to include Kagi email and other services), family plans and annual payment discounts available." I have to say I support a lot of these initiatives, but I can't help but think altogether they're creatin…

20 bucks per month is way too much, i like kagi but there isn't a justification for this price over free alternatives like duckduckgo

Try it free then ask your boss to pay it.

For me at least it saves me whole minutes and lots of stress on about half my queries which means at $20 it pays for itself in half a month and as a free bonus I get better results for the rest of the month as well, an ad free experience, no tracking and the opportunity to support a Google competitor.

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#86

Post by gkasev » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 11:07 AM UTC

tmsbrg wrote: post #79

It seems the trend lately for new services to be built with rather high monthly fees. From the FAQ: "We plan to offer entry level plans for as low as $10/month, unlimited plan at around $20/mo as well as make bundles (to include Kagi email and other services), family plans and annual payment discounts available." I have to say I support a lot of these initiatives, but I can't help but think altogether they're creatin…

This is a fair point, high quality services should be available to all. That being said, the idea of paid search is quite novel and you need to target early adopters first. In my mind, this service is priced for early adopters and I only hope that the business is profitable from the very beginning. For me what WhatsApp used to charge for their service (1$ a year) is the epitome of high quality service for the masses. I would be very happy to see a service like Kagi scale to that with time.

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#87

Post by petard » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 11:07 AM UTC

schleck8 wrote: post #80

tmsbrg wrote: post #79

It seems the trend lately for new services to be built with rather high monthly fees. From the FAQ: "We plan to offer entry level plans for as low as $10/month, unlimited plan at around $20/mo as well as make bundles (to include Kagi email and other services), family plans and annual payment discounts available." I have to say I support a lot of these initiatives, but I can't help but think altogether they're creatin…

20 bucks per month is way too much, i like kagi but there isn't a justification for this price over free alternatives like duckduckgo

I agree that 20 bucks is relatively a lot of money. On the flipside, running a search engine does not come for free, curious what the costs of Google would be without the ads.

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#88

Post by ejb999 » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 11:07 AM UTC

tmsbrg wrote: post #79

It seems the trend lately for new services to be built with rather high monthly fees. From the FAQ: "We plan to offer entry level plans for as low as $10/month, unlimited plan at around $20/mo as well as make bundles (to include Kagi email and other services), family plans and annual payment discounts available." I have to say I support a lot of these initiatives, but I can't help but think altogether they're creatin…

Not really sure that you need a 'silicon valley salary' to afford $10/month.

Netflix charges almost double this and they have 100's of millions of subscribers worldwide; my guess is that a premium search engine only needs a small fraction of that number of users to become a worthwhile and profitable service.

Can't say if I would pay for it or not - haven't used it yet - but if that was the price of dumping google searches I for one would be OK with it.

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#89

Post by tut-urut-utut » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 11:08 AM UTC

While they claim they support privacy now, I'm still hesitant to create an account there. I can even use Google to search semi anonymously, given a proper ad-blocker, but creating an account to use a search engine? So I need to be fully logged in and identifiable and all my queries are associated to my accounts without any doubt because I signed in?

No thanks. I don't want that some hidden ToS change or future acquisition expose all my searches in the future, even if current search engine operates in a good fate.

Re: Kagi: A Premium Search Engine

#90

Post by Semaphor » Fri, Jan 07, 2022, 11:12 AM UTC

tmsbrg wrote: post #79

It seems the trend lately for new services to be built with rather high monthly fees. From the FAQ: "We plan to offer entry level plans for as low as $10/month, unlimited plan at around $20/mo as well as make bundles (to include Kagi email and other services), family plans and annual payment discounts available." I have to say I support a lot of these initiatives, but I can't help but think altogether they're creatin…

Note that their pricing discussions are rather open in their discord. They use both Google and Bing API for searches, which isn’t cheap (they said about $12/1000 queries).