I’ve been using this search engine and I have to say I’m absolutely in love with it.
Search results are great, Google level even. Can’t tell you how happy I am after trying multiple privacy oriented engines and always feeling underwhelmed with them.
Have you tried it? What are your thoughts on it?
It’s ridiculously expensive. It’s not private if you have to link your searches to a paid account and none of those payment providers are private. They don’t seem to have open sourced any of their key functionality, meaning you have to trust them to not be collecting your activity data.
I spent a long time getting rid of software and using services that I either no longer trusted or was unable to make an informed choice due to their lack of open source code and I’m not going to take a retrograde step now. And that’s without the issue with their choice (a continued choice I believe) to use Brave results, a company I’m personally not prepared to support.
If they don’t cache your search history to your identity, which they claim they don’t, then I’m not sure why that’s a problem.
Because claiming they don’t is not the same as being able to verify they don’t by making their code open source.
You can never verify what’s really running on their servers, even if they privided source code.
Deciding to trust a provider - any provider - isn’t just any one thing. So, the most basic step to me is all the relevant code being open source. The next step is getting their infrastructure audited. The step after that is seeing what happens if they get court ordered to provide data.
They do none of that and I’m just too cynical to accept ‘trust me bro’ as a convincing sales tactic.
That’s a security audit, looking at its vulnerability to attack.
They had a security audit, they have a canary on their website, they have a privacy policy which is legally binding, and they have a business incentive.
If you so much suspect that they do collect searches and associate them with accounts (something which they claim they don’t do), you can make a report to the relevant data protection authority, which then can audit them.
As someone else also commented, you can use an alias email and pay in crypto if you really wish to not associate your account with your searches. Just be advised that between IP addresses and browser fingerprinting it might always be possible to associate your searches together (even if not to you as an individual with name and surname), and this is something that big CDNs like cloudflare or imperva also provide for you. So you still rely in most cases on what the company says and what their business model is to determine whether you trust them or not.
So far kagi has both a good policy (great policy actually) and a business model that doesn’t suggest any interest for them to illegally collect data to sell them.
I don’t suspect or accuse them of anything. Quite the reverse - what I’m saying is that without things like open source code, privacy audits etc, we’re being asked to take their word for it all. They might well be the most privacy respecting company ever and they equally might not be. If you’re happy to take their word for it, that’s entirely your call. I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind, I’m just answering OP’s question with my own opinion.
And I am saying that there are tools to increase this trust.
I also want to stress that you have no tools really to verify. Open source code is useless, audits are also partially useless. I have done audits myself (as the tech contact for the audited party) and the reality is that they are extremely easy to game and anyway are just point in time snapshots. There is nothing that impedes the company tomorrow to deploy a change that invalidates what was audited. The biggest tools we have are legal protection (I mean, most companies that collect all kind of data disclose that they do nowadays) and economic incentive. Kagi seems to provide good reason to trust them from both these angles.
Obviously, if that’s not enough for you, fair enough, but if you are considering a company to be intentionally malicious or deceptive, then even the guarantees you suggest do not guarantee anything, so at this point I really wonder if or how you trust anybody, starting from your ISP, your DNS provider, your browser etc.
Current Kagi user paying for it privately. They offer top ups to your account with crypto. I do xmr -> btc to top up my account. Also signed up with an alias email.
What would i be searching for that’s so difficult to find that I would pay for Kagi? Especially when there are multiple options for good free search engines.
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That’s not so much a filter bubble as it is noise reduction. No, I don’t want to have Pinterest results in my search engine. No, I don’t have an Instagram or Twitter account and therefore can’t see the content there anyway. I am developer, so I want to raise the relevance of GitHub in my results.
I appreciate your rose tinted glasses, but when you wear them, red flags just look like flags.
You skipped political filter bubbles, which can be manipulative indeed. And in their aptly named manifesto, Kagi Corp promises just that:
You could customize an AI to be conservative or liberal, sweet or sassy!
In the future, instead of everyone sharing the same search engine, you’ll have your completely individual, personalized… AI. Instead of being scared to share information with it, you will volunteer your data, knowing its incentives align with yours.
Isn’t that thoughtful of them? A bubble where you are alone, a bubble they want to build.
You will pay the company,
you will give up your data,
and you will be happy.You forget the part where they mentioned a different business model that allows to dump the ad-driven one, aligning the interest of the user and the vendor. In other words, a model in which the company gets the money from the user so that it can build a product for them, rather than getting money from others (advertisers, etc.) so that the user is someone who simply has to be milked for data or sold shit. This frame, in my opinion, changes quite significantly the otherwise dystopian nature of such (future) vision. The objectives in fact are very important in this discussion. Facebook, twitter etc. need people to spend time on their platform to give value to their customers (the advertisers). Creating bubbles, fomenting incendiary content, etc. are all functional to that objective. If the business model was different, the same might not happen.
In any case, the current features that exist (and that are not the speculations on the future in the manifesto) allow the users to customize the rankings as they want, without AI or kagi doing it for us. If I don’t want to see fox news when I search for something, I make the conscious choice and downrank it. If I want to see guardian and apnews, I uprank them. The current features empower users to curate their own results, which is very different from an opaque, black-box product doing it for us for specific reasons like might be the case of Facebook.
Ultimately, someone will make a decision about how to rank results in a page. Some algorithm needs to be used. What’s a better alternative, compared to me providing strong inputs to such algorithm, that does not raise red flags?
If Kagi Corp’s goal is to create a user profile on you, then whether they’re using your data to serve you ads or not is irrelevant.
This is the Privacy community, not the “You will give them your data and be happy” community
In reality I did not read anywhere that they intend to create a profile on you. What I read is some fuzzy idea about a future in which AIs could be customised to the individual level. So far, Kagi’s attitude has been to offer features to do such customisations, rather than doing them on behalf of users, so I don’t see why you are reading that and jumping to the conclusion that they want to build a profile on you, rather than giving you the tools to create that profile. It’s still “data” given to them, but it’s a voluntary action which is much different from data collection in the negative sense we all mean it.
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I find DDG not great at finding what I need, where Kagi returns less results but they are more relevant.
There’s also AI features that can be integrated with the search results which helps.
I was introduced to it by an IRL friend of mine very early on and was very sceptical. I then tried it many months later and what actually convinced me most are its “advanced” features. They’re features that should obviously be in any search engine but since there’s been practically 0 innovation in this space in the past decade or so, this is very refreshing.
The results being on par with Google at the worst also helps.
Pretty much everything about it is really great. The only thing that’s not great is that you’re required to identify yourself with every search. I’m not aware of any alternative for a paid search engine though. They claim to not log or otherwise abuse your PII and it’s believable but there’s still a risk.
I guess the price is also kinda high but it’s justified AFAICT.Btw: [email protected].
I stumbled onto some comments about Kagi angling to become an AI-first search engine that actually brags about putting you in a filter bubble. From Kagi’s manifesto:
In the future, instead of everyone sharing the same search engine, you’ll have your completely individual, personalized Mike or Julia or Jarvis - the AI. Instead of being scared to share information with it, you will volunteer your data, knowing its incentives align with yours.
One YouTube video suggests a grim future: “Everybody has a feed uniquely tailored to them. Nobody talks about their favorite YouTubers anymore, because everybody watches different content farms. All the real creators quit a long time ago.”
Food for thought. I don’t like the idea of these filter bubbles.
ETA: I didn’t realize it at the time but they also promise data collection for
- Political echo chambers: “But there will also be search companions with different abilities… You could customize an AI to be conservative or liberal”
- Corporate brand loyalty: “Ask it for a good coffee maker, and it’ll recommend choices within your budget from your favorite brands”
If you’re looking for an open source search engine that’s building its own data set, one exists (and it’s totally open source and free).
If you’re looking for something that collates other engines’ contents, SearXNG is also open source and free.
Kagi isn’t really unique in any way here; their most unique quality appears to be linking your searches to an account, requesting money, and promising not to sell your data at a later date.
… Okay, I just tried Stract, and its results are… Mostly not helpful.
My understanding is that Kagi makes an effort to tell you how they anonymize your search so they can’t tie it back to your account afterwards, whereas Searx is more dependent solely on the goodwill of whoever is hosting the instance. Both are good faith dependent in the end, but one has a profit motive for keeping that faith.
Edit: I hope Stract gets there and takes off one day, but today doesn’t seem to be that day for me.
The privacy policy is also a legally binding document, not just a promise that the company does. If they are found violating it, the GDPR fines are going to hurt and they would lose the customer base in a blink. Their privacy policy right now is exemplary, I am one of those who read policies before using a product and kagi’s is literally the best I have seen: clear, detailed, specific and most importantly, good from the privacy perspective.
There’s some tradeoff here, keep garbage out and relevant results in. Definitely want to stay connected with others and share knowledge (such as websites that provide quality info)
Do they have an android app? I haven’t been able to find anything that looks trustworthy
I’ve used Quick Search since 2013. Simple, configurable.
Back then I had it tied to the search button (which no longer exists ☹️)
The Search button is now when you long-press the Home button.
I just added the search engine to my browser. I don’t see the need for an app when all of the results are going to open in the browser anyways.
startpage is already on google level and the defaults of some searxng instances are better the google results
startpage is already on google level
probably because it literally proxies Google’s search results.
I just started paying the unlimited plan. I like the search results and the URL replacement setting. I can redirect YouTube videos to piped and Reddit to the old one so my VPN doesn’t get blocked. The lenses are also top notch.
Not open source. I find Yandex to be objectively the most superior search engine for all purposes, as they work outside Western jurisdictions. Better privacy than Google/Bing.
If you want a “private” search engine, Searx metasearch with “default language (all)” option works about 85% as good as Yandex.
Edit: 85% is only meant for text/link results. Yandex also has reverse image search, video search and other things with no competition in sight.
If you want lesser private but more ordinary results, Startpage is great.
Everything else is same tier or bad/useless. DDG (western censorship), Ecosia, Qwant, Google, BingGPT and others included.
However, Yandex works under Russian jurisdictions. Brave search is ok
At the risk of sounding incredibly naive, what kind of western censorship are you talking about? I’ve never noticed that as an issue with either Google, DDG or kagi.
DDG (uses Bing index) censored a lot of non-mainstream portals both at socialist left and conservative right spectrum, pushing Western neoliberal agenda websites that run Washington/Brussels propaganda. This was done during Ukraine conflict and seems to be a continuing theme, probably even for Israel genocide. Some call DDG as a “diet Google”, since Google/Bing have done the same thing since long ago.
I am not sure how Kagi deals with this problem, since it is a different style of search engine, putting users in their own search bubbles, and has its own indexing to begin with.
Thanks for elaborating! I don’t use search engines for political/news related queries so I guess that’s why I never noticed (or it’s so effective that I just accept it as the truth of course…). Either way, I agree that’s bad and I hope it’s not an issue with Kagi.
I recommend keeping Yandex as second opinion, and Searx with “default languages (all)” results option as third opinion. Relying on one for news is very problematic for critical thought and truly free, democratic discourse.
It’s great using their Fastgpt which gives accurate results from various forums and websites, where other gpt based search engines lack. And got to try their Summarizer.
I recommend to use it as Secondary source (with tempmails) and Primary remains SearX for sure.
From my brief interactions with the dev I believe they’re doing things the very hard way when it comes to indexing.
It might be the only choice once AI poisoning becomes prolific. It’s already corrupted the niche topics and soon it may overwhelm the topics with more human eyes on it.
It is a privacy nightmare as they have your payment information on file.
Kagi only stores the information about the client that you explicitly provide by using your account, as laid out in our interface. This includes:
Your email to facilitate account access and support contact (ex: password reset) Your account settings (ex: theme, search region, selected language)
And nothing else.
I’m so glad that all companies always follow there privacy policy.
Seriously though even if they don’t track you an adversary could compromise them
They don’t, but a company built on that premise (private search) that does otherwise would be playing with fire. It caters to users that specifically look for that. I would quit in an instant if that would be the case, for example.
Seriously though even if they don’t track you an adversary could compromise them
This is true about pretty much anything. Unless you host and write the code yourself, this is a risk. It is a risk with searXNG (malicious instance, malicious PR/code change that gets approved etc.), with email providers, with DNS providers, etc.
What solution you propose to this, that can actually scale?
I’m currently a Kagi user. When I first used it I thought it was an excellent alternative to Google, and well worth the price. However ever since they integrated Brave results, I’ve noticed a significant decline in the quality of results. The only reason I’m still subscribed is because I haven’t found a suitable alternative.
Yandex
I love it. Personally I don’t think it is too expensive, though I am probably a power user of search engines, as I need it a lot while programming all sorts of stuff… So maybe it is just me saying its worth the money, because I use it a lot
To me 100$/y seems a little much compared to Proton Unlimited and the amount of features there. Perhaps it’s like that due to their size and AI features
Running a search engine is just a lot more expensive than running a VPN and email service. The amount of data and processing power needed to have a useful search index is just so much higher
paid options for the elites: buy several multi TB hdd and host&curate a personal search index… to supplement conventional search results.
or personal AWS storage but thats likely to be risky and more expensive. also relatively difficult.I’ve had better results than on Google in many cases. Also leaves DDG and other privacy relevant alternatives in the dust.
But, unless you are a power user it’s hard to justify the cost. Very pricey.
The starter tier is only $5/month for 300 searches, which is more than enough for your average user.
I can get not wanting to pay for search, but I wouldn’t call $5 “very pricey”. In fact, I’d be so bold as to call it reasonable.
I have 2000 searches in the past 7 days… 300 searches a month seems so miniscule
Maybe I am not average but I blow past 300 pretty easily. I also think you may underestimating how much people search on their phones.
Same here. I tried on the starter plan but had to upgrade. According to my account I have made 802 searches since January 4th. So 17.4 searches a day on average. This means that for a 31 day month I am looking at 620 searches.
I am also a heavy user of bookmarks and browser history. So I don’t rely on search to open specific sites (like searching for “facebook” which is one of Google’s most popular queries). So someone who is in the habit of using search for direct navigation is probably going to be a good chunk higher.
That being said I work on the computer and do a fair number of searches for my job. So I can believe that a light user is pretty comfortable at 300 searches a month. But moderate searches or people who use the search engine for navigation will need the unlimited plan.
I just checked and performed more than 300 search queries in the past 4 days.
I just checked my history and performed 611 searches this week on this device alone. 300 is not even close to enough for a week. $5 is way too expensive for that.
I use the family plan with my wife. So we end up at $7 per month per user. Which IMO is ok. Given how important search is for our every day internet usage, I can accept this price.
I rarely have to jump to the second page of the search results to get what I want, so I am really happy with Kagi.
