Welcome to Kagi, the paid search engine full of surprises, which today opened an account in the Fediverse!

@fediverse

@kagihq is the very interesting project for a paid search engine, without tracers and with an accuracy in identifying results such as to exclude all Google spam.

Those who believe that #Kagi’s costs are too high, should reflect on a small detail: if Google lets all those searches be done “for free”, who pays those costs? The answer might seem simple: “advertisers”.

Yet this would be an incomplete answer: like saying that rain is caused by clouds!

In reality, those costs are paid by users, by being milked and letting Google extract their “value”, a bit like in the human farm in Matrix…

We first heard about Kagi on the @lealternative website (unfortunately, since then the prices have increased a lot, raising many doubts about the sustainability of the project) and recently Cory Doctorow also talked about it on @pluralistic

In any case, we are really happy that a service like Kagi’s, effective and respectful of users’ privacy, has landed here in the #Fediverse.

mastodon.social/@kagihq/113074…

  • @viking@infosec.pub
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    09 months ago

    I’ve tested kagi and agree that the search results are great. What I don’t like is that it’s making anonymous searching impossible, since I have to be logged in to use it (or use my unique token as part of the url for mobile searches).

    Ultimately this means to me that in a private window mode (or even logged out with a fingerprinting resistant browser) I do not have the same degree of anonymity I enjoy even when using Google, let alone DDG or others.

    I like the idea of not being dependent on google, but exposing my entire search history to one single entity is not my answer of choice.

  • XNX
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    09 months ago

    The number of searches i get for the $5 should roll over to the next month if i dont use them all. No way i will be able to convince anyone to switch to this when they will run out of searches every month

    • @UNY0N@lemmy.world
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      19 months ago

      That’s a valid criticism.

      On the other side: Pay for a year at once and get 3600 searches/year. The rollover also doesn’t happen, but the effect is drastically reduced. Also get a discount overall.

      I’m not saying that kagi is perfect, but fuck google sideways. Eat the rich. Pay for the product or you are the product.

  • beefbot
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    -19 months ago

    Kagi lied about its privacy claims and I can pull up the thread about the user who exposed it & the CEO got into this ridiculous evasion over it but I’ll let you do it for me. KAGI SUCKS 💥

    • @harrys_balzac@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      -19 months ago

      Thank you for the reminder. The name was tickling my brain but I couldn’t remember. The CEO acted like a major creeper. Must have gone to the Musk School of Bidness Mismanagement.

  • asudox
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    9 months ago

    I pay 5 euros for a VPS at Hetzner and self host my own SearXNG metasearch engine without compromising my privacy. Unlike Kagi, I can search without limits and without the AI stuff that even Kagi has started getting into.

    • @IDew@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      If something is free, you’re the product in almost all cases.

      • @Jrockwar@feddit.uk
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        9 months ago

        Like the fediverse? Like SearxNG? Like Wikipedia?

        I know you’ve said “almost”, but there’s a free search engine in there where you’re not the product…