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What's Next for Kagi?

blog.kagi.com

140 points by mgw 2 years ago · 32 comments

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throwup238 2 years ago

> We are also thrilled to report that we have achieved profitability.

BOOM! That's great news to hear. I've been paying for Kagi since the early adopter days and it's become one of my most used tools. It'd be really painful to replace it at this point and I hope Kagi stays in it for the long haul.

Just look at that side by side comparison with Google. I haven't used it without a adblocker in so long it's a shock. It's gotten really bad.

D13Fd 2 years ago

I'm really glad this actually focuses on search and not "AI all the things". I'm definitely rooting for Kagi to succeed and not get bogged down with distractions.

  • 12_throw_away 2 years ago

    Yeah I'm struggling to recall any other recent instances of companies giving their "AI" (really LLM) ambitions a realistic scope. Hearing "It's useful for some specific things" from Kagi, rather than "it will be in everything and change everything" is ... shockingly refreshing.

ColinHayhurst 2 years ago

Congratulations to Vlad and the whole team. They are showing how a patient building of product and customer base can succeed, where a VC backed approach for a similar business model and product did not sustain. RIP Neeva.

We are delighted to support you as a customer and see your growth. Alternative search options are needed more than ever and becoming increasingly appreciated. We too are doing our bit in search, with a different business model and shared values about empowering a "human-centric and sustainable web that benefits individuals, communities, and society as a whole".

wkat4242 2 years ago

> With Kagi, for the first time in history of search engines, you are the customer and everything is built around you and your needs alone.

There have been several others that attempted this. They didn't succeed. But they're not the first.

I'm using SearXNG myself, which is quite similar to Kagi in that it combines search results from the other big parties (google, bing, brave). It's not quite as configurable (e.g. choosing to omit certain sites from the search results is not possible, but you can tune the relevance of each source search engine) but it serves me well and it's fully self-hosted. It can also easily integrate with more 'grey area' sources like torrent sites which is nice.

I try Kagi once in a while but I'm not yet conviced to pay for it - it is quite expensive by European (Spanish) standards. And I like to keep things under my own control. When I spend money I prefer it to go to hardware, hosting, knowhow etc. I even run an ollama server just so I don't have to use ChatGPT (for most things).

I try Kagi once every few months to see if it's significantly better than my own setup which so far hasn't really been the case. But I wish them well! :)

  • freediver 2 years ago

    > There have been several others that attempted this.

    Interesting, for my information, which companies are you referring to?

    • nickpsecurity 2 years ago

      My memory is fuzzy on what I used way back in the day like this. One was a meta-search engine across general engines (eg Google) and specialized engines. It had boolean operators to let me drill into the search. I think it was Turbosearch.

      Regardless, I wanted features like that on top of Google, Bing, etc. It could be free and ad supported with a user focus like DuckDuckGo.

      Also, a Kagi vs DuckDuckGo comparison might be more fair than Kagi vs Google since DDG is still serving the users despite being ad driven.

    • benhurmarcel 2 years ago
      • freediver 2 years ago

        Aware of Neeva - Kagi was founded 3 years before it.

        • wkat4242 2 years ago

          Yeah that was one I was thinking of. I didn't know it was more recent, it feels like ages ago. But also altavista, it was very customer centric, though it was free. But it was basically just a demonstration of digital's expertise and it did feel like they wanted it to serve the customer as well as possible.

          And I thought DuckDuckGo had plans for a paid search experience at some point.

          But now that in think of it I'm not so sure, sorry. Sorry for positing incorrect info.

          • freediver 2 years ago

            Thanks for confirming, I was just genuinly curious if I missed one. I know browsers had a history of being paid, but no search engines before Kagi.

rckclmbr 2 years ago

I've been really happy with Kagi, I've been using them a while.

One feature request, I actually wanted to brag about how long I've used it, and went to my account but couldn't see a "member since...", or a full purchase history. Seems like it would be a small but awesome feature :)

vanilla_nut 2 years ago

> Kagi Maps, based on Mapbox and OpenStreetMaps.

Extremely exciting. Google Maps has gotten significantly worse in the last couple of years, finally passing the threshold of enshittification by instructing me to turn "at the <fast food seafood restaurant>" instead of just telling me the road name late last year. Search for points of interest has gotten awful, just as bad as Google Search, the Play Store, and the App Store with sponsored content taking over all usable space for basic searches (seriously, I do not want you to prioritise <fast food donut restaurant> when I search for "diner" or "coffee shop").

If Kagi can prioritise useful search results, trade ads for a monthly subscription, and contribute meaningful data back into OpenStreetMaps as a backend, I would subscribe in an instant. Currently DuckDuckGo is enough to meet my web search needs, but I desperately need a good alternative to Google Maps. Unfortunately Osmand is just not a great interface for most of my needs, and has no Android Auto support, either.

  • bastawhiz 2 years ago

    Maps are the weakest part of Kagi right now, and it's a real sore spot for me. Searching for the name of a location often doesn't find it. Searching for addresses often finds a location in a different state (even if I specified the state). It seems to have no idea where I'm at in any way shape or form.

    I've been trying to buy a cabin and looking up the addresses has basically meant just switching to Google, unfortunately. I'm really hoping the address lookup gets better, and it learns to search nearby results.

  • carlosjobim 2 years ago

    The fast food restaurant sign is usually 300 times larger than the road name sign, if there even is a road name sign. I have never been able to see any road name sign from the car.

  • timeon 2 years ago

    > Unfortunately Osmand is just not a great interface for most of my needs, and has no Android Auto support, either.

    This is probably not relevant to you (as I think it also does not have android auto) but there is also OSM app called Organic Maps.

hildenae 2 years ago

I have a single feature i miss from Kagi - optional search history - i sometimes find myself unable to find exactly that article/bloggpost/documentation i found using some search words i don't remember from last week.

CtrlAltDelete51 2 years ago

Congratulations on profitability, and I’m really excited to see the roadmap you shared.

beretguy 2 years ago

Side note: they are using bearblog.dev for their blog! That’s super awesome!

geoelectric 2 years ago

I’ve been very happy with Kagi, though I did eventually downgrade from the Ultimate to the regular plan as ChatGPT Plus added more usability features (memory, preprompts, voice conversations, etc). I’ll have to check the article to see if there are hints, but it’d be nice to have more reason for the big price jump going forward than goodwill and the advanced models.

But regular Kagi is one of those “take it out of my cold dead hands” sort of techs. Now that the iOS extension mostly works for bang redirects and such, it’s been a great experience on all platforms.

I have an iOS shortcut built around the Summarizer that has been invaluable for my TL;DR moments on sprawling articles. If I get bored I share to that shortcut and instantly get back bullet points in a popup window. Brilliant.

I’m happy to hear Kagi is successful and will likely be around for awhile. Going back to straight Google or DDG would be rough.

prirai 2 years ago

Waiting for Orion for Android.

  • _nalply 2 years ago

    They said last year if resources allow it, they would perhaps port Orion to other platforms.

    https://orionfeedback.org/d/2321-orion-for-windows-android-l...

    > We are getting a lot of repeat questions about windows/linux/android version and sometimes it appears that users think that the team is choosing not to work on these platforms. The situation is quite different and simpler - we do not have the resources to hire a new team to do any of these platforms yet.

    > And since Orion is funded by its users only, it is entirely up to the number of subscribers and Orion+ sales we have that will enable funding a new team to make Orion for any new platform. And building a browser is not cheap, especially one on top of WebKit.

    > Ways you can help accelerate this is:

    > - Contribute to Orion development with your time

    > - Help spread the word about Orion to attract more users

    > - Get Orion+ and financially support developmet

  • freediver 2 years ago

    Porting Orion to Android would be tough, but there is Kagi Android app in the works.

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