I want to start by inviting everyone who are looking into this post to check the git commit linked before reading and after that read their current page, it will make more sense.
I think most people don’t understand the fact that Kagi is meta-search engine which literally collect the results of other search engines and display it and add very small amount of results from their index(tecilis).
They are starting to act shady this year(check the attached git commit to see their changes to their documentation page).
People basically pay them to search Yandex and Brave for them.
Before anyone say but privacy, they are closed source and there is a better open source meta search engines which actually respect your privacy and need your donations more than Kagi shareholders.
Open source alternative:
Kagi has good search results and they are presented well. It also has some useful features like forbidding certain sites and prioritizing others. I like that by paying I’m the customer and not the product. And their “small web” initiative is commendable.
That said, I’ve been a customer for nine months on an annual subscription, and I will not be renewing. The first reason is that I find them just too expensive for what they do. The second is that, even being that expensive, they’re not breaking even. That undermines my trust in their future as a search engine and makes me less interested in paying a little extra for a good cause.
huh, I guess starting their own T-shirt business wasn’t that great of a move after all
It wasn’t even a business, it was just a huge purchase of tshirts for marketing, apparently, right at the beginning of their startup. Like, I have no idea why you would think distributing t-shirts would build your search engine’s business, let alone doing it when you’re trying to get your technology sorted out and running.
“Hey, neat shirt, what’s Kagi?”
“Why, it’s a search engine you pay for that searches other search engines and aggregates the results for you!”
“For realz, where has this been all my life?!? Sign me up, my brother!”
https://blog.kagi.com/celebrating-20k
like… why
That’s hilarious.