I apologize if this is old news, but I just noticed it. It looks like Kagi has added Fediverse Forums as a default Web search option.
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heres to the painfully slow and gradual rebirth of the internet.
We learned a lot of lessons from the first one. Here’s hoping we don’t make the same mistakes.
lets see if federation can keep the hawks away. they will certainly be trying (again) once we hit critical mass.
Cool. Wish more search engines would do that.
But, as far as Kagi goes, it’s a paid service and it’s an American company. So I won’t be using them.
Not using Kagi because its an American company is valid. But people are too used to products that are free because they make the person using them the product. There is still a transaction with a free product.
Kagi is not free because they respect your privacy and don’t sell your data.
I have donated €1500 to opensource software projects and paid a whopping €7 for software. These (privacy respecting) projects got my money because they weren’t transaction based. Capitalism is not the only way.
There are plenty of paid products that do not respect your privacy and sell your data.
And there’s free products that do respect your privacy and don’t make you the product. They are community products.
For instance I offer my bandwidth and storage to thousands of strangers to share torrents and they do the same to me. No secondhand transactions happening.
I don’t use them or never read their privacy policy so i don’t know. But it’s not because it’s a paid service that company won’t use your data to sell it for more profit. That’s EXTRA profit for them, so why the hell not. And them being based in the US means I already can’t trust them with their poor privacy laws.
I’d happily pay for search, but Kagi is way too expensive.
10 searches a day, for $5/month? (US)
Like, that is way too much.
I can receive thousands and send thousands of emails per day for that price. Is search really that much more expensive?
$10/m is unlimited searches though…
And yeah, searches are actually quite expensive. There’s a LOT of infrastructure that goes into making something unique with your own search engine that isn’t just a wrapper over Google.
The actual compute cost per search, in 2024, was $0.0125. Kagi states they want to keep Costa below $0.015 per search, but their search partners are a major expense.
That ofc ignores all the supporting infra, devs, support…etc that goes into making it all possible.
The business model just doesn’t make sense then (using search partners).
Because $60, let alone $120 US, a year is far more than most people would be willing to pay.
Dunno what to say, it’s just more than most people can justify paying for the service.
I’m gonna stick with DuckDuckGo and the newly free mullvad cached search
I mean, the business model works? They make money, they pay staff, and they are growing.
I don’t know what you’re talking about, people have price sensitivity of course. You are projecting yours onto “everyone”, is it not a successful business?
There’s a niche they cater to, if you are not that niche then you are not that niche. Doesn’t mean the niche doesn’t exist.
Sure, but I’m still feeling like complaining that there isn’t a business that’s made affordable pay-to-search a thing. (That I know of)
I’m not taking back that $120 USD/year for search is way more than most people would be willing to pay
Though yeah, I suppose saying their business model isn’t working was hyperbolic, I must admit.
But people are too used to products that are free because they make the person using them the product.
That’s definitely one model for operating a public service, but its far from the only one.
What non-american search engine do you use?
I write questions on bathroom stalls and then check back in on them every few days.
Why are you using Grindr Classic for search?
For the personalized results, ofc
And then you write your own (wrong) answers below it in a different hand writing and pen. And call it SEO.
Not working, the only response I get is penis
As a former Kagi user (quit all my US company subscriptions recently in order to support EU) I’ve now used Startpage for a month and it has been great so far.
No one mentioned open source alternatives, so I’d add: https://docs.searxng.org/
Search engine? I started rawdoging urls a while ago.
The internet is increasingly more useless, the sites i really need are bookmarked anyway.
And I like swiss cheese on my ham sandwiches. Oh, sorry, I thought we were just saying non sequitors.
In all seriousness, that is not an answer to the question. Yes, some (often older) people will always use a search engine to find the same website they browse all the time. But search engines are also incredibly valuable for finding new things or verifying claims. I have a bookmark for the Warframe wiki but that doesn’t help me when I want to research different monitor energy efficiencies or find a repair guide for my toaster oven.
And while people CAN collect a set of (searchable) websites for different topics they are interested in… that is how we got into (one of) our current mess(es). How many people just use reddit for everything and thus make themselves vulnerable to corporate shittery and misinformation campaigns.
That’s three paragraphs of “I took this serious.”
Oh- oh!
That’s, uh… A sentence!
Did i win?
I started rawdoging urls a while ago.
Works best when you’ve got a web ring or other friendly community of contributors to reference against one another.
But those are few and fair between in the modern day.
I ask friends who are more intelligent than me
And if they don’t know I assume it is forbidden knowledge that would drive me mad to know
(I am only half joking)
https://metager.org/ is run by a German non-profit. Since late last year it’s pay to use because their advertising partner (Yahoo) cancelled their contract without warning. But it’s cheaper than Kagi. Also the non-profit is part of the project that’s building the European OpenWebIndex ( https://ows.eu/ ) that’s releasing this year.
Does anyone use yacy?
Better than qwant in my opinion.
Qwant. It’s French.
Writing them off as an American company is totally valid, but I’m happy to pay for a quality service because it keeps ads out and lets me vote with my money. It’s really not much to cling to psychologically, but it helps. When I and others completely degoogle our lives it moves no needles at GoogHQ, but paying subscriber metrics are a KPI discussed in every board room in the world.
Lile they say, perfection is the enemy of privacy! Kagi has been the best as an engine out of all I’ve tried. If a better competitors comes up, I’ll give em my money.
I’m not a fan of Kagi’s founder, so I generally don’t use it.
Any specific reasons? I’m a very happy Kagi user and the founder is active on their discord and seems like a really nice guy.
There was this debacle, at least
Hmm yeah I was aware of that but personally didn’t see it as a reason not to like Kagi… Lori came across as quite drama seeking without solid arguments imho. Thanks for the response!
It’s had it for at least months but even if its years old it’s still a cool feature and deserves attention
I’ve been using Kagi for about a month now, and I think I’m gonna stick with it. Paying with dollars instead of data/attention feels more healthy for everyone involved.
(Fully realizing, of course, that there’s nothing stopping them from doing both, and that’s why we need better laws. Voting with your wallet will never be a complete solution… but it is something I can do right now.)
Since they implemented privacy pass, there is now something stopping them from doing both. See https://help.kagi.com/kagi/privacy/privacy-pass.html
Obviously with it you trade the need to trust them for your own personalization (as they can’t know it was you searching).
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I don’t know the details, so maybe there is a reason, but I am not part of the “outraged” crowd. I think kagi use case is neat and innovative, bot protection is meh
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If someone is interested about Kagi vs Google (made by Kagi): https://mastodon.social/@kagihq/113971972586118949
Kagi is shaping up to be really cool with this and the Orion browser supporting firefox/chrome extensions on ios.
Just came across https://d-shoot.net/kagi.html . Seems like there are more good reasons to avoid it besides it also using Yandex as an index.
I encourage subscribers to go make themselves heard on this post if you support being able to disable particular indexes such as Yandex.
Thanks for the link, I’ll def be more critical about it in the future.
I’ll still use it (for now) because as a no-nonsense customizable search engine its by far the best I’ve tried.
Makes sense they advertise here enough
I’m not sure they do at all. There are just a bunch of Kagi users here.
I mean the idea is to appear organic, it’s not very effective advertising otherwise. It’s free real estate there is no reason they would not be doing it.
Should I ask them about being paid? I’ve been doing it for free all this time.
Not trying to say there is no organic discussion, but I would be shocked if they were ignoring this avenue for getting the word out. It’s basically free advertising and advertising is generally expensive.
If they aren’t paying anyone is it advertising? I’m not sure what you’re actually talking about anymore. Maybe I never did
I think when I tried them out a while back they also had a usenet search? Can anyone clarify on this?
They do.
Not sure if you use that feature but does it work like an indexer and allow direct downloads of “Linux isos”?
Obligatory mention that Kagi also use the Russian search index Yandex. This aids the Russian economy and the Russian war effort.
Edit: I recommend reading my in depth explanation here https://lemmy.world/comment/15520236
and they use Brave, too.
Every single time with red comes up there’s always this FUD. You, specifically, don’t miss any opportunity to make mention of this. Across Lemmy, which is rather suspicious. Helping the Russian war effort? That’s a pretty big leap here.
Why?
Imagine a search engine aggregator aggregating search engine results from multiple sources for aggregation. The more indexes they support the better the results are going to be for everyone, I don’t see this as a problem for data aggregation.
Why should data aggregation give any sort of shits about geopolitics?
Regardless, the topic of this post, fediverse search, is part of their own search engine anyways afaik
I have been sick a lot lately, so have had a lot of time on my hands. I don’t have a search for Kagi or something. I wanted to use Kagi though, so I was disappointed when I realized that they want to continue this practice.
What are you implying with it being suspicious? In what way?
If Kagi pays a Russian company for a service, that company pays taxes to the Russian government.
Russia spends 32% of its budget on the Russian military. So for every dollar they get in taxes, one third is spent on the Russian military.
With a corporate tax rate of 20% that means 6.4% of Yandex profits go to the military. Since Kagi is mainly a paid service, I don’t want my money to go to the Russian military, and I guess a lot of other people don’t want this either.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-hikes-national-defence-spending-by-23-2025-2024-09-30/
The Russian people are not to blame, and I am sure a lot of great people work at Yandex and at different companies in Russia. That said, Russia chose to attack a peaceful democratic country, they are currently sanctioned by a lot of western countries in hopes that it will pressure their economy enough to force them to stop the war.
There isn’t much we can do to stop the conflict besides hurting them economically and supporting Ukraine. If we continue to use Russian products and services then that does not work. Unfortunately this affects everyone in Russia.
The mandatory signing in to perform any search is a deal breaker. Privacy first
It’s because you have to pay for the search engine. They dont serve ads
Feel like you’re jumping the gun a bit with this opinion. Kagi is one of the best options if you prioritize privacy. Have a closer look at their policies.
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So you won’t pay for a subscription to use a search engine. Do you prefer the model that other search engines use where they take the content of your searches and use it to advertise to you?
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Read my comment again, because I neither accused you of anything nor reduced your argument. I’m not the original poster you replied to
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When did I say that? Point out one single line that even remotely implies this. Flagrant strawman. What else would you call it?
Perhaps, I dunno, a misunderstanding?? Why do you assume everyone is out to get you? Why do you interpret everything as hostility?
How do you intend to pay for a search engine without signing in to it and having it track your search history?
they’re for profit
From my subscription cost, yes. This aligns my privacy goals with their need for income which is not the case for “free” advertising-supported products.
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This is what their Privacy Pass extension is for. Once it verifies you as an user, it doles out a bunch of generic “arcade tokens”, which don’t have any identifying information. You lose Kagi’s personalization features while using them, but your searches aren’t tied to any account beyond just “Kagi”, so you and everybody else using the privacy extension are the same person.
At least, as I understand it.
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Hoping to be constructive: how do you think search engines should operate? Or maybe how would you like one you consider “good” to operate?
Also wondering how you see something like Privacy Pass that Kagi announced recently: https://blog.kagi.com/kagi-privacy-pass
This is particularly useful in the context of a privacy-respecting paid search engine, where the Server wants to ensure that the Client can access the services, and the Client seeks strong guarantees that, for example, the searches are not associated with them.
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And if it changes, I will leave and stop paying. They are a user centric model. They thrive because of paying users.
Cool, but I will still prefer to use duckduckgo and type Lemmy in the end of my query.
Imagine if someone added that feature to SearX/SearXNG
There is one. Or maybe not just one.
Been using this for a month or so its nice
Does it work on lemmy content too?
Edit: thanks all!
ive been finding lemmy content on duckduckgo and other engines for a while now. dont intend to try kagi tho so cant answer your question.
Surprisingly I’ve had zero Lemmy results in my searches.
Probably because my searches aren’t “Tell me why Linux is so cool”. Lol.
Neat feature. Any word on if Kagi has ties to the Kremlin?
Its an American company so I suppose it is possible.
Sadly true.
