Why I Lost Faith in Kagi

That was a huge wall of text - TLDR :

Kagi has private investors
Kagi has had some questionable uses of the private funding, such as opening a t-shirt company
Kagi started as a AI focused company and pivoted to search
Kagi is spread too thin over many different projects
Kagi doesn't take privacy, or user data seriously

Fair enough, but as long as google, bing, ddg, etc get more and more unusable there will be fans of alternative searches

Even if Kagi crashes and burns, it has demonstrated there is a market demand for useful search results that users pay for directly.

FWIW I don't use Kagi because of the login / payment info requirements, so I agree broadly with the author. As bad as public searching is, its good enough to not give up privacy.

115

Thanks for the summary!

I'm not a Kagi user but I see people enthusiastically promote it often on Lemmy so I thought it was worth sharing this. After doing this post I noticed it is on HN as well, with 100 comments : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40011314

35
I've been really enjoying Qwant since I started using it after Mozilla announced their partnership.

I am super annoyed when the "turn of ad blocker" popup shows itself. They'd get many more users by not using that and serving ads from the same domain as searches. I get that they have to pay for their services somehow.

8
- FYI Qwant shares some of your info with Microsoft, specifically your IP
  
  14

the CEO sealioning after the author asked them not to contact them anymore is a bit icky, too.

41

I had no faith to lose. Its a search engine sign into. How could that be private.

37

They allegedly don't know their user's search queries. That's how it's allegedly private.

4

Kagi is one of the least trustworthy companies I've seen recently. I know it has fans, but it constantly talks out of both sides of its mouth.

Kagi does not give a solitary damn about privacy as the average person understands it.

Kagi lied in its emails.

"AI is mentioned zero times"

...is clearly incorrect.

There's quite a lot more to distrust about a company that wants to lock you into a filter bubble.

37

Turns out Kagi does do advertising

They promote their search engine but their users don't get to see ads. I don't know what's wrong about that. Every company advertises with its products. I don't see what's reprehensible about that.

We did not say we maintain anonmity, but privacy, which are two different things. For example. your parents may know everything about you, yet still respect your privacy.

They're right, anonymity and privacy are two different things. Since you have to pay to use Kagi, you're not anonymous. But they allegedly don't know what you as the user search for when using their search engine. So they're being honest here and how can honesty be bad here? Anyways, we're on privacy@lemmy.ml, not anonymity@lemmy.ml or whatever.

“AI is mentioned zero times”

While I still give you this one, they're technically correct. The word "AI" isn't there but they mention AI features, haha. It's a bit debatable since Vlad said "kagi.com" - which doesn't mention AI or AI tools. Only when you go to the pricing page there are mentions of AI tools.

15
- I don't think we have an argument except maybe on technicality, so I'll do my best to use your points as a springboard for further clarification/critique of Kagi and not of you.
  
  They promote their search engine but their users don't get to see ads. I don't know what's wrong about that.
  
  What's wrong is Vlad had just said "That community is 100% responsible for Kagi's growth as a business through word of mouth (Kagi does no paid advertising)"
  
  And he should be the first person to know that statement isn't correct.
  
  may know everything about you, yet still respect your privacy.
  
  The problem here is that nobody in this community will recommend a corporation that "may know everything about you but respect your privacy."
  
  When recommending a messager service, common consensus always leans towards the one that knows the least about you.
  
  This is because corporations can change or be forced to give up data, which would render the pinkie-promise of "we won't" moot
  
  I've seen an argument posted here or on Reddit that Google is technically private because they know about you and won't sell ads; it's basically the Kagi line. Basically nobody cares even if it's true (and it's turned out to not be true).
  
  Vlad said "kagi.com" - which doesn't mention AI or AI tools.
  
  Maybe not the homepage, but the site itself is very explicit about AI being the point of their project. And if Kagi will change their statements about everything else on a dime, and have such poor views on privacy, why not also follow their own manifesto?
  
  You can read their pro-AI manifesto on the Kagi.com domain right here.
  
  You can read a critique of this manifesto and how it talks about you "volunteering" your data to search engines, and other creepy stuff, right here.
  
  12

I enjoyed reading the article. To me, the perspective of the owner reminds me of the owners of Brave in that they are Libertarian in ways that seem aligned with mainstream views at a glance but the Venn diagram also overlaps with a disdain for regulation, while portraying a (potential) facade of being eternally infallible and trustworthy while also being a for-profit company.

Elon Musk also comes to mind in that his intelligence leaves him vulnerable to overlooking the nuances of conversations and alternative point of views. I think there's a general over reliance on artificial intelligence as a savior that will be fully embraced that will lead to large issues in the short/long term for Kagi.

Personally, it always felt a little bit like astroturfing hearing all of the kagi fanboys in every privacy thread, but for what it's worth, seeing them show up live In the flesh in this thread as well makes me feel a bit less like I'm talking to bots lol

Personally, I self-host my own version of searXng that only uses search engines that don't track my IP address. I'd say that those results are good enough 90% of the time, and when I need something more granular, I use a publicly hosted version of searXng that uses Google in its results

30

How can anyone worry about IP addresses when the search engine also knows your real world payment credentials? That and privacy don't really mix.

25

They know the names of their customers but they don't know their search queries. There's the privacy. At least that's what they said. Since Kagi isn't Open Source it always comes down to trust.

10
So, this means Proton is not private either? Any product you pay for cannot be private?

There is a difference between anonimity and privacy.

7
- Email is inherently not private. Even if your own provider zealously protects your privacy, if the person you're emailing uses Gmail, that's all she wrote.
  
  10

Wow, those unsolicited emails are icky

23

Am I the only one thinking Lori comes across as a bit of a dick here?

20

Yeah kind of, but the CEO needs to learn that not everyone will like their products, you cant convince everyone.

The person said that they dont want to engage with the discussion, then the CEO should have just let it be.

6
- This is the second CEO to be a weirdo to a random person in the past month. First it was the Tumblr CEO, now it's the Kagi one.
  
  Kagi was already in hot water for ignoring its paying customers' previous complaints, so this whole "I really want to know your opinion, we are a human first company!" thing really sounds disingenuous after the same CEO overruled away all criticism or tried shuffling it away from public channels and onto his much more closed-off Discord.
  
  8
What's wrong with having boundaries?

5

I am suspicious of anything I see being pushed as heavily as Kagi is pushed by it's alleged users.

17

We're just vocal because we've been suffering over the enshittification of Google search for so long.

4
- There are numerous other popular search engines out there though.
  
  1

Well that sucks... that vlad dude is ehm... weird. I am happy with the service I am getting from Kagi, but such behaviour is not acceptable...

12

To me it's understandable. Imagine you start a project like this that grows over the years and you even have some employees after a while. Now someone writes an article about your project with accusations that are wrong (at least in your mind). Wouldn't you be pissed either? At least I can't imagine anyone who could just ignore that.

2
- It's barely a blog that was barely reformatted from the nearly inaccessible Gemini protocol. It's a glorified Lemmy post. If that's an article, then I'm a journalist and I want my Pulitzer
  
  2

TBH, OP sounds like a bit of an ~~entitled douche~~, edit: not the most appropriate descriptor, but I do think OP should try and look at the situation from another perspective.

In their blog post they complained about lack of transparency and noted numerous issues with Kagi that caused them to lose faith in the company. The CEO personally responds to explain themselves (i.e. make things more transparent) and OP sticks their fingers in their ears and acts liked they're a victim because the CEO attempts service recovery.

I've made public complaints about companies before. I wish I received such tailored and personalised responses.

12

Did we read the same article? His responses to GDPR were very concerning, and I say that as an American.

19
- Right?! Super easy to be "privacy focused" when you just flat out refuse to acknowledge anything as personally identifiable information!
  
  14
- I agree with you. I wasn't referring to the actual contents so much as OP's attitude about the e-mails from the CEO. I think Kagi could benefit from hiring, or at least consulting, with specialists in the field to better define their position. It's clear that OP has legitimate concerns.
  
  3
I haven't seen many public diatribes against Kagi, but the ones I have seem to be like this person. They complain very publicly based on their perception of Vlad, spend their days in Discord fomenting drama (which seems like something only children should be doing) and are so fragile that they think getting measured emails from someone they went after publicly is a form of harrassment. It's absurd.

I can only hope this was written by a teenager, otherwise it's a pretty rough way to live as an adult.

11
- After reading your comment, my calling the OP an 'entitled douche' was not the best response. I remember the fragility of being a teenager, and even being a young adult... While unlikely, if the blog's author does come across these comments, I would rather they take a moment to consider things from Vlad's/Kagi's perspective rather than just take my comment as a personal attack.
  
  8
You wish the CEO of a company would harass you?

You wish a CEO would give general denials and the same non-answers you see in a comment thread while pretending to engage with you in good faith?

Fuck off, the CEO gave no new info or perspectives and just showed himself to be the asshole that recent emerging evidence had been showing he was.

4
- You and I have a very different idea of what constitutes harassment.
  
  15
- Jesus. How do you function if an email constitutes harassment?
  
  I get “harassed” daily by hundreds of spammers. I just don’t reply or give it another thought. Things OP could have done.
  
  6

I never had faith in Kagi. If anything gets shilled too much in a cultist manner, treat it like a red flag, no matter closed or FOSS.

12

I mean, that seems like a really sceptical way to live. Often things get shilled because people are just happy with the service and think the business is doing things well. I am a kagi user and have brought it up to some others, including outside of lemmy, because I find it produces better search results than ddg etc. And it's a definite step up from google in privacy

4
- Being skeptical of anything online isn't really a bad thing IMO. There's so much garbage to wade through.
  
  5
- Use Searx with "default [all]" language option. Use Yandex with a VPN. This combo is superior to anything else. Why? Because Yandex is Russian, and unlike western search engines, they ignore DMCA law result removal requests.
  
  Yandex results are almost better than the old 2007 Google, with reverse image search and video search being the king as well.
  
  I used Qwant extensively, until they became another business. DDG was made by a CEO that was in data selling business before, and censors for west government agenda, like Russia bad or Israel good. Mojeek is okay but... Yandex has no competition. Startpage is proxied Google, okay but also dicey ownership.
  
  Digdeeper has a decent comparison of search engines on his blog.
  
  2

I spun up a docker container for searxng

10

Next step is to make it public to help other people and blend your data/traffic

7
- Open a search app to the public? So their searches come from my IP address? No fucking way, unless I'm missing something.
  
  5
- I'm still trying to understand searxng, does it start with nothing and build up its index each time you search? Will your results be rubbish for a while?
  
  3
- My host-fu is weak and the uptime is terrivle right now... Trying to figure out why the container just crashed randomly
  
  3
👍

1

Successful CEOs need to learn to shut the fuck up.

9

Conflicted! Cory Doctorow just endorsed it & I’m way less smart than that person so i usually do what they say :\

7

Cory Doctorow, seems like a really nice, important and smart fellow but has his weak moments as well :-) https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/05/cyber-dunning-kruger/#swiss-cheese-security

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it's very likely that Cory didn't have enough time to do research, visit the company's Discord, and so on.

1
- Rule of thumb is don't judge anyone by their discord
  
  0
Cory helped harass and witch hunt Naomi Wu "SexyCyborg" tech girl from China. He is a slimy fucker.

1
- Ugh, that’s awful, and I believe that, but it’d be great to see a link, since I’m reduced to using Kagi obv
  
  1

Seems like people making people mistakes. Not anything horrific.

5

I enjoy kagi as a service that I've paid for, but yeah... stuff like this makes it hard to enjoy with a clear conscience.

I think the op already said this, but at least this shows that a product like this (with a little more focus, transparency, and integrity) could be sustainable.

3

I'm still considering giving it a try. I've been using the free perplexity app to do all my searching with recently and that's worked pretty well, but not perfect.

3

I've been using both Perplexity and Kagi for searching things, and it's working out pretty well for me. The main thing that I find Kagi useful for is filtering to Fediverse results (which tends to be mostly Lemmy threads).

It's pretty expensive though...

2
Just try it. You can always cancel your subscription if you don't like it (or just pay once without subscribing). I've been using it for half a year now and absolutely love it.

1
- I’m still on the free first 300 searches. Looking like I’ll subscribe.
  
  0

Im with Kagi on this. Wtf is wrong with someone sending you emails to an email you decided to make public. This person is projecting how fragile their argument is by reacting this way.

Vlad was doing the right thing discussing it in private first before they probably address this stupid attempt at causing drama. I read all of the shit they posted and it sounds to me like they are nitpicking/strawmanning AI features which are very VERY optional.

2

Wtf is wrong with someone sending you emails to an email you decided to make public

there's nothing wrong with that. continuously messaging someone after being told more than once that the recipient doesn't want to continue the conversation, though? that's not okay.

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- I get that but it's a dick move by the author of that article to publicly speak bad about a product and then don't even wanna listen to what that person who made that product has to say to defend it. Especially if there's some false information that get's spread by that article. I'm not saying anything written in that article is true or false - just explaining the situation from Vlad's view.
  
  -5

I use it primarily because of the fact that I can pay with cryptocurrency and I wish to support more companies that take cryptocurrency directly. I do wish it were Monero instead of Bitcoin, but since I can just do an instant swap to convert from one to the other, it's at least okay. Proton is the same way.

-7

Just wanted to let you know that I am starting a new business selling bagged air. I accept Crypto! $1000 annual fee for unlimited air.

3
- You can't have my hard-earned crypto. Provide a useful service, and we might talk.
  
  0