Founder here. Thanks for submitting it, but I am afraid there is not much to see right now.<p>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]<p>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 pronounced ka-gi (similar to yogi), I get asked that a lot so there it is...<p>If you want to beta test, feel free to sign up and we will do our best to send an invite within a week.<p>[1] <a href="https://twitter.com/vladquant" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/vladquant</a>
Been using them for about a week, very happy with it.<p>Regional results (especially since the last update) feel as automatic as google. While I still hope they’ll add my suggestion of a bang for region switches, most queries I do don’t need one, and it properly switches between English and German.<p>All of the DDG bangs. Seriosuly, search without bangs is nothing I’d ever want to go back to.<p>Built-In Domain Blacklist. Goodbye Pinterest. Forever.<p>General results are great. More relevant results than either DDG or Google and a great presentation (like showing snippets from accepted or upvoted SO answers)<p>And I have not even played around with advanced filters like lenses (which people in their discord seem to love).<p>Negatives: So far, I’d say only that the widgets are less usable than DDGs.<p>I had low expectations, but I’m really very positively surprised.
Whoa... this was really confusing to me for a moment. Kagi.com used to be one of the premier digital commerce platforms for software and shareware, especially Mac games, serving customers from 1994 until 2016. [0][1][2] Anyone who registered one of Ambrosia's awesome shareware games used Kagi's services, for example. It's really weird to see the company name and domain return again in this way! Best of luck to the team to live up to this legendary name :)<p>[0] <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/19961216050944/http://www.kagi.com/" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/19961216050944/http://www.kagi.c...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160413151203/https://www.kagi.com/company/about-kagi" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20160413151203/https://www.kagi....</a><p>[2] <a href="https://tidbits.com/2016/08/04/kagi-shuts-down-after-falling-prey-to-fraud/" rel="nofollow">https://tidbits.com/2016/08/04/kagi-shuts-down-after-falling...</a>
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.<p>What I have not seen so far being discussed anywhere, though, is the Willingness to Pay [3] for a search engine alternative, say like Kagi. What do you think is an acceptable monthly subscription price? What do you think is an expensive price? What do you think is a prohibitively expensive price?<p>Here is my take on those questions: 5$, 10$, 20$.<p>UPDATE: I'll summarize all answers and post the results here for reference.<p>[0] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29782186" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29782186</a><p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29772136" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29772136</a><p>[2] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29690877" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29690877</a><p>[3] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willingness_to_pay" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willingness_to_pay</a>
It seems the trend lately for new services to be built with rather high monthly fees.<p>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."<p>I have to say I support a lot of these initiatives, but I can't help but think altogether they're creating a division of the web into premium services the rich can afford, and low quality services for the masses. Most of the world doesn't have the silicon valley salaries where $10/month is considered low. I feel like there should be an ideological consideration as well to make better services accessible to as many people as possible. Just my 2 cents.
I've used Kagi (and you.com) a bit, and I'm amazed at how much better the results were for the few queries I made. It wasn't blogspam any more, I got actual articles from actual sites. Hopefully I'll keep using them, but Google is overdue a disruption.
> Be snappy and responsive on every device even without JavaScript enabled.<p>Huh, I thought I'd catch them out by disabling all javascript but they actually didn't use any for this webpage. Nice.
omg they let me apply from/to dates on search results, I'm in love<p>just got my invite after a couple days of signing up, will be trying it out, but so far no stackoverflow/github issue clones, and they allow setting "preferred" and "muted" domains, I might pay whatever they ask<p>I'm keen to know their business plan however. Hope they don't get acquihired for the algorithms, never to offer these features again...
Looks like a great product and I've signed up. One thing from your FAQ Page: You list Kagi as using significantly less CO2 than Google and Bing. Since Kagi is scraping both Google+Bing - wouldn't the Kagi CO2 total of each search be Google+Bing+Other Sources+Kagi?
Test driving for a week now. Fast. Relevant results, haven't reached for alternatives (backups) just yet.<p>Disclaimer : haven't done a deep project yet ( new software stack or deep bug fix for example ).<p>Would pay for a neutral search engine, right now ( and I have no subscriptions atm, not even NF ).
If this really lets me block certain websites for good, then I'm sold.<p>I absolutely hate those sites that scrape other well-known sites (like StackOverflow, Quora, Reddit) and add ads and SEO spam. They are increasingly better at being on the top of the search results, and I cannot get rid of them.
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?<p>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.
Another happy user here:<p>The time I save by not having to sift through all the utter nonsense that Google, Bing and even DuckDuckGo showes in my face any given day will easily be worth $10 a month alone and on top it is sanity preserving, privacy respecting and has no ads.<p>Its kind of like a polished version of <a href="https://search.marginalia.nu" rel="nofollow">https://search.marginalia.nu</a> just with a much larger index.<p>The best explanation I can give is maybe:<p>Kagi is to other search engines today what Google was to other search engines 20 years ago: Outstanding quality, better than anything else I have tried - and rapidly improving - no nonsense (again like old Google) and nifty extra features (again like old Google).<p>(Note: I haven't tested Neeva yet so I cannot say if Kagi is better than them. But compared to all the rest I have tried the last ten years it is in a differen league.)
People pay for VPNs but continue using the web with their normal accounts, thinking their privacy is protected.
A private search engine would be a much better way to protect the privacy.
I also recommend to think about something like Nigma[1] (Russian metasearch engine) had done before, something along the lines of Wolfram Alpha - mathematics, physics, chemistry. It's possible to integrate with something like Sage Math for this purpose, should not be hard but would be immensely useful for many.<p>[1] <a href="https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9D%D0%B8%D0%B3%D0%BC%D0%B0" rel="nofollow">https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9D%D0%B8%D0%B3%D0%BC%D0%...</a>
Is this Kagi in any way related to the defunct payment processor which used to bear the same URL?<p><a href="https://tidbits.com/2016/08/04/kagi-shuts-down-after-falling-prey-to-fraud/" rel="nofollow">https://tidbits.com/2016/08/04/kagi-shuts-down-after-falling...</a>
Thank you for this!<p>I would really love to pay you for this service. Chomping at the bit. However, I and many others would be much more willing to do this if we don't have to rely on your privacy policy (i.e., <i>pinky swear</i>) to keep our data private.<p>I think the simplest thing for you to do would be to implement a an option that allows paying with cryptocurrency (ideally Monero), and which doesn't require an email address. Just generate a subscriber number or username, allow login with user + pass (+ TOTP/HOTP) and allow me to fill my account with crypto!<p>Someone below mentions a token-based scheme for injecting noise; that's more elegant in some ways but of course more complicated to implement.<p>thank you for your work!
I wonder how it collects the results from “the best search engines on the market”. Bing’s API in Azure has very specific terms of use that do not allow something like Kagi, and Google Search API is not designed to build a generic search engine.
Both Kagi search and Orion browser sounds like a dream come true. I hope to get into beta soon.<p>Also wish for Orion browser to come to android aswell
Been using it for a week now, very happy with it. I still had a few times where google had better results but I will pay for kagi (so long as they have flexible payment options)<p>Check out their Orion browser too, been playing around with it.
My biggest issue with our current search engines is the lack of transparent open governance. My municipal water supply and the Debian project provide examples of better models.
Can you show us some examples of where you are better. Pick something that normally spews out seo garbage like “Seattle gardening” and show me what you can do.
Kägi is also the name of a Swiss chocolate maker: <a href="https://www.kaegi.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.kaegi.com/</a>
premium browser using our harvested data..<p>hypocrisy lvl 10000<p>> Kagi includes data from Apple, Google, Microsoft, Yelp, Wikipedia and others<p>come back after the reset Murica, this way of dealing with things is kinda outdated<p>is this yet another nonsense YC pump&dump thing?