nileane

nileane, 5 months ago

What a disappointment.

I was genuinely enthusiastic about Kagi. I've been using the service for about a month, and I would have gladly continued my subscription for what I thought was a great product.

But there's no way I'm letting any more of my money go to them if they're perfectly aware that there's a chance it could end up in the accounts of those who actively fight to have me stripped of my rights.

nileane, 5 months ago

Here’s a couple of screenshots from the forum thread since it seems to be down at the moment.

1st screenshot is the initial post from a user expressing their concerns.

2nd and 3rd screenshots are responses from the Kagi team.

Response from Vlad (Kagi team): “It is easy to get distracted. Google, Microsoft, Mojeek and Yandex all may not align with our mission to humanize the web in their current form. And some of these companies (may have) had far more shadier practices, depending on your point of view. But now by using their technolgy, they are contributing to our mission. By using their technology, we do not need to necessarly align with their business practices, leadership or mission. If someone does not agree with their government, that does not mean they should not be using the roads and other infrastructure of their country. If on the other hand we worried about all these things like it is suggested here, Kagi would not be possible. And what about Javascript? Should everyone stop using it completely because it was invented by the very same person they may not like on a personal level? Clearly these are arguments that go nowhere and benefit nobody. We are staying focused on being in the business of providing best search in the world and showing that a paid business model is the only sane way of doing this. Happy New Year!”
One other response from the Kagi team (Vlad): “Our goal is to provide best web results in the world. That means including as many sources of search results. By including results from Brave API, we add more results to our pool, and we put users ahead of money because this costs us additional money to provide. We do it anyway as we believe that Kagi users deserve to have the best search results in the world, from a wide range of diverse sources. This ensures that if you can not find something on Kagi, you can not find it anywhere else. We evaluate APls only on the basis of merit in the context of providing superior search engine results. Considering company x founder political views is not a factor in this evaluation. We are primarly in the business of search and we'd like to stay focused on that.”

nileane, 5 months ago

After exchanging a few DMs with Kagi founder Vladimir Prelovac tonight, it seems that they are not going to change or evolve their stance on this matter anytime soon. Welp.