Anyone using Kagi search? Thoughts?

Submitted by twovests in just_post

Over the past 3 years, search engines have gotten increasingly shitty, and this has accelerated with AI shit.

Every IPO is light a star burning out of the sky, as unsustainable companies come to realize that advertisements and microtransactions weren't a sustainable business model. I'm ready to pay for things now, but I haven't seen a lot of things worth paying for other than Mastodon instances and occasional LiberaPays / Patreons / etc.

Then Kagi came around, promising Good Searches Again at $10/month.

But it smells more of the Gab-y "big tech bad" and not the RMS-y "big tech bad". The search results seems to have good reviews among HackerNews-y types, but those are, y'know, HackerNews-y type people. Worst of all, it has AI features, which usually means "Not Good".

TLDR: I miss Google, is anyone using Kagi and enjoying it?

I'm wondering if anyone here is already using one of these and Thinks They Are Good?

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neku wrote

one hundred and twenty dollars per year? one hundred and twenty united states dollars?

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devtesla wrote

I'm not using Kagi cause so much about it is cringe (doggo mascot, Japanese name, AI projects) but it's no more than any other online service. Theres tons of online services I use where I know the owner has weird politics. It's kind of unavoidable Lol, tho it was sad to give up basecamp when they fired everyone cause of woke. Maybe that'll happen here?

Theres also a history of services like this that get used in ways the owners don't really intend. Like if you go on Blue Sky rn you'll notice that jack doesn't post there and it's all a bunch of libs with politics that hate jack Lol. This will probably happen with Kagi

For search I'm honestly really happy with ddg, because the most important feature to me is bangs. I know where to find stuff most of the time, I don't need to have a search engine give me happy results. But it is cool that Kagi can do that. And it also has Bangs Lol. So they know what's up!

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twovests OP wrote

Theres tons of online services I use where I know the owner has weird politics. It's kind of unavoidable

this is why i luv jstpst dot net. nobody here is weird and i love everyone here hehe

Theres also a history of services like this that get used in ways the owners don't really intend.

Yeah-- at least Kagi isn't cultivating a community. I'm okay sharing Mastodon (the software, not an instance) with creeps and nazis.

It looks like Kagi isn't an outright scam though, which is good?

And it also has Bangs Lol. So they know what's up!

yesssssssss

if they were marketing to me, this would've been the first thing they show me on the splash page. I luv bangs

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hollyhoppet wrote

scoping out the twitter and personal website of the CEO (Vladimir Prelovac) he just seems like your run-of-the-mill ai-obsessed liberal techbro so at least it's not some not-so-secret reactionary haven like gab

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twovests OP wrote (edited )

I appreciate this. I couldn't find any obvious scandals or weird stuff either. I could put up with cryptocoin libguy stuff if it means Good Searches, but I haven't seen any super-good-reviews yet.

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Seirdy wrote

I use it. It's better than all the other generic search engines. But yes, it has problems well-described in this thread.

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