This year has been extraordinary for Kagi ( https://kagi.com ).
Kagi is a paid alternative to ad-supported search engines like Google and DuckDuckGo. It has recently revised its pricing model, reducing the cost for a plan with unmetered searches from $25 per month to $10.
Kagi boasts the following (and more) features:
Blocking or boosting specific domains in your search results
“Lenses”, which are individual setting profiles (e.g. region locks, domain whitelists) that can be applied to search queries
All of the Bangs that DuckDuckGo has (e.g. type “!yt” in front of your query to immediately search on youtube.com)
Universal Summarizer, which works with any website, PDF document, YouTube video and more
This blog post goes into full details about Kagi’s capabilities.
So I actually watched a talk by the person who coinded “enshittification”, Cory Doctorow, recently, and I have changed my perspective about Kagi. I no longer think Kagi is doomed to enshittify.
Enshittification requires advertisers. As long as Kagi finances itself with money that does not come from advertisers, it will not enshittify.
This does not mean that it’s not problematic that their code is closed-source.
EDIT ENDS HERE
I like what I hear about the user experience, but there are many problems I see with the service.
For one, it’s based in the USA, so it is legally subject to the insane, antidemocratic, and awful state surveillance there.
It is also a corporation, so it is subject to enshittification. Currently, it is giving users loads of stuff so that users use it, but sooner or later investors will want their money back and Kagi will enshittify.
Finally, these two problems would be mitigated by open-sourcing and making libre their software. With that, alternatives in more sensible legislatures could open. Users could migrate to instances that are still libre and not enshittified.
It is really unfortunate that Kagi is doing so many things well while doing some fundamental things terribly. As it stands, Kagi is doomed to enshittify.
There is no law in the requiring data logging in the US, nor is it required to comply with FBI security data requests. and beat out gag orders over the subject. It is also deemed a violation of the first amendment.
The part that I don’t get is how they can match Google in terms of search results quality when Microsoft couldn’t even get close with Bing and a heck of a lot more time and money.
Easy. Kagi cares about the quality of their product giving you the customer good results. Their product is a search engine. Google doesn’t care to make their search engine better currently. Their product is ad placement and sales. You are not their customer.
Kagi already exceeds Google at being a search engine, at this time.
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EDIT BEINGS HERE
So I actually watched a talk by the person who coinded “enshittification”, Cory Doctorow, recently, and I have changed my perspective about Kagi. I no longer think Kagi is doomed to enshittify.
Enshittification requires advertisers. As long as Kagi finances itself with money that does not come from advertisers, it will not enshittify.
This does not mean that it’s not problematic that their code is closed-source.
EDIT ENDS HERE
I like what I hear about the user experience, but there are many problems I see with the service.
For one, it’s based in the USA, so it is legally subject to the insane, antidemocratic, and awful state surveillance there.
It is also a corporation, so it is subject to enshittification. Currently, it is giving users loads of stuff so that users use it, but sooner or later investors will want their money back and Kagi will enshittify.
Finally, these two problems would be mitigated by open-sourcing and making libre their software. With that, alternatives in more sensible legislatures could open. Users could migrate to instances that are still libre and not enshittified.
It is really unfortunate that Kagi is doing so many things well while doing some fundamental things terribly. As it stands, Kagi is doomed to enshittify.
What’s wrong with simply switching as soon as enshittification starts? You’re not making any permanent commitments to it.
There is no law in the requiring data logging in the US, nor is it required to comply with FBI security data requests.
and beat out gag orders over the subject. It is also deemed a violation of the first amendment.
https://kagi.com/privacy at least sounds pretty good.
https://blog.kagi.com/safe-round this sound good as well.
The part that I don’t get is how they can match Google in terms of search results quality when Microsoft couldn’t even get close with Bing and a heck of a lot more time and money.
Easy. Kagi cares about the quality of their product giving you the customer good results. Their product is a search engine. Google doesn’t care to make their search engine better currently. Their product is ad placement and sales. You are not their customer.
Kagi already exceeds Google at being a search engine, at this time.
Don’t think you will find a better search engine than Kagi. They can’t even see what queries users are running, according to their own comments.
That’d be weird if they couldn’t, there’s no way they can improve their search engine other than by watching the way users use it.
Otherwise it exists in a vacuum.
I would guess they mean that they can’t see which queries belong to which users.