Kagi (Search Engine)

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108

I think there’s an important angle to this discussion that goes beyond indexing quality, payment mechanics, or account concerns. Those are absolutely significant issues, but we should look at this holistically.

What Kagi really brings to the table, in my view, is its monetization model. “Sustainable tech”: An honest price for an honest service. In a space that often relies on fickle grants, VC funding, or community donations, a straightforward paid model feels far more sustainable—especially for privacy-focused tech.

Paying directly for quality software aligns incentives. When users are the customers, privacy comes naturally. There’s no need to subsidize the product through surveillance or data extraction.

It’s also worth acknowledging that much of the internet we take for granted is quietly subsidized by other services. In many cases, these are things we probably should be paying for directly. A search engine, in particular, has a clear value proposition and is something we should arguably be paying for.

Ads may not necessarily jeopardize our privacy, but they undeniably degrade the experience of using a search engine. The best way to get rid of them is to offer a direct revenue stream.

109

I tried Kagi in late May with the three-month free trial of professional plan from the perk provided by one of the services I am using.

Bear in mind they never promote themselves as “privacy-oriented”, although they have many privacy features like zero telemetry, and Privacy Pass with the related policies of like no collection of users’ search history.

As discussed above, their selling points are “ad-free” with the framing of something like “customers no longer become the products by paying”.

If you think they are privacy-oriented, it’s because they are better than Google. However they are far from competitors like Brave, Firefox and Mullvad (don’t be serious about my examples if you disagree). Login needed, compatibility with Firefox/Chrome extension support which can lead to privacy/security issues if you use their Orion Browser?

At least they are honest about their views of privacy, like it or not. So you better don’t expect they will improve their privacy.

Another aspect to determine if they are private is that they are like Proton creating an ecosystem which has had translations, news, summary, assistant, maps and even mail which is ongoing. This will create “shifting trust” and “everything into one basket” issues.

Off topic (I posted here as this can relate the thinking of privacy. If admins find it inappropriate to be shown here, you can delete the following):

They are fixing the “broken web” they claimed by building another kingdom of web. People appreciate they are creating the good old days of Google, but fail to think if they are going to become another Google. They think paying can avoid becoming products, but fail to see ad-supported companies like Meta and Google having subscriptions as well and they can get both (money from advertisers and users) too. I won’t trust a company simply running their business model by asking users to pay, because I saw a lot of companies just keeping raising their prices and even introducing ads. Apple, which at the beginning relied on hardware sales, introduced subscriptions for services, and they now have ads on Apple News (even in subscriptions) and soon on Maps. I can’t see what can guarantee Kagi to only accept users’ payments in the long run. There is nothing to appreciate Public Benefits Corporation as it can be removed anytime as you can see the case of Twitter.

If you simply use it because the products are great, enjoy it. If you want to have a trustworthy (not evil) and privacy-oriented tools, it’s not for you.

110

Worthwhile clarification: Kagi logins support Privacy Pass, which has been discussed on PG before. For more information on Privacy Pass, see @fria 's Privacy Pass writeup. Requiring a login is not inherently a threat to privacy when using this protocol

111

I’ve been using Kagi for a short while and I have to say I love it. I was using Brave Search before and I was quite happy with it, but Kagi is a step up. The only thing I preferred in Brave was the speed and slightly higher quality of AI summaries.

The 2 things that have stood out in Kagi are the quality of the results and the customization options (Site promotion or demotion, avoiding certain sites altogether, CSS, custom lenses, widgets, etc…). I think the criticisms regarding ecosystem sprawl are fair enough, but personally I think they are simply trying to offer what people have come to expect from a search engine. It feels like the number of people that purely want a list of results without any"fluff" whatsoever are probably few in number outside of these kinds of forums.

As things stand I think they are great from a privacy perspective. I don’t want to reiterate everything stated previously but the business model, audit, policy and the privacy pass option make me firmly believe that my searches will stay private and are not being snooped on.

I promise I don’t work for Kagi :joy: I’ve just had a great experience and wanted to share.

112

It’s too expensive and not enough of a step up from Brave. I also don’t like how there’s limits even when you pay.

113

Kind of insane they don’t verify email addresses. Why not just use usernames atp. I’ve never seen a professional project let alone a paid project that doesn’t verify emails.

Someome could easily make a script to automatically make new accounts to use kagi for free forever because of the free searches when you sign up.