Enough is enough—I dumped Google’s worsening search for Kagi

I like how the search engine is the product instead of <em>me</em>.

See full article...

 

[cesspoolcreature]

Exchanging a search engine that can easily identify you, and even easily track you, because you're paying for it, it not an upgrade. Google is awful, but you could always browse in a private browser, or if you made an account, you could use false information. But Kagi, you've given them positive identification, to easily associate you with everything.

I am never going to pay to search the Internet. I already pay my ISP for that privilege.

It's not inherently true that the fact that you pay for something makes it easier for them to track you. That's literally why crypto exists, and Kagi accepts it. If you're privacy-conscious, you can sign up with a burner email and pay them in Bitcoin.

I wish more services would adopt Mullvad VPN's model of privacy-friendly purchasing. You get an account number, that's it. You go to their website, and "charge up" that account with a one-time payment, and they accept Monero which is way better than Bitcoin for untraceable payments. There are huge downsides to that model obviously--if you lose your password, or get scammed and give your details to someone else, the company can't help you--but to me the privacy is more important and you can avoid those issues by not being a moron.

 

[WereCatf]

I'm sticking with Google for as long as the udm14 Firefox extension for disabling those stupid AI results works. I'll look at the alternatives if/when it stops working.

 

[Barking Spider]

hacked together from posts in a 12-year-old Reddit thread between two guys named /u/WeedBoner420 and /u/14HitlerWasRight88.

Nazis. Why is it always Nazis?

 

[vhoracek]

My primary search engine for the past near-decade has been Ecosia. I am fully aware that the results are coming from Bing, but so far the experience has been superior to Google and on par with DDG in maybe 98 % of cases.

I'm not at all keen on anything that blends in any kind of AI "feature", regardless of whether it's optional or not.

 

[crmarvin42]

Definitely an interesting take. I have been enjoying the experience of improved search, but never really thought about it from a worsened privacy perspective.

it isn't.

I'm sure Kagi keeps some logs for a while, but what they don't do is keep long lists of your searches to create and advertising dossier on you. They have no need to do that, since you are paying them for the service, and you will stop paying them if they were to start doing that (I know I would). Read up on their privacy page what information they do keep. It is vanishingly small by comparison to what Google collects, and what little they do collect is not shared with anyone else.

I've seen lots of folks say something to the effect of "I don't care if google/my ISP knows what I'm doing, becuase they know what everyone is doing" which is an opinion a person can have, I guess. But the difference here is that Google makes their money by monetizing that information. Kagi does not. They don't sell it, or inferences drawn from it, because they don't have an advertising business that would need that.

TL;DR - whatever information Kagi keeps is also kept by Google. The difference is Google is going to monetize that data, whereas Kagi will delete it once it no longer needs it to provide you the service you have paid for. Maybe not perfect, but far better than the alternative.

 

[fkaOld_one]

I have a short list of ‘things I pay for that I will eventually get rid of’ and a longer list of ‘things I don’t pay for but would consider getting rid of eventually’— DDG is on the second list. But I agree that search is important enough to pay for if I’ve already gone through the first list and feel like I have some loose cash.

 

[Castor!]

I've been paying for Kagi for about a year, and I'm a fan! I share the author's disappointment with their inclusion of AI, but they've respected my choice to never interact with it, so I'm willing to be forgiving on that front.

I ought to spend some time learning how to use more of Kagi's features -- the one that I do use regularly is their "lenses", which are great. I'm a librarian, and when I'm working on my monthly orders, I love just being able to toggle my custom "Movie Reviews" lens and only get results from the handful of review sites I've predefined. And never having to see Pinterest is almost worth 10 bucks a month on its own.

 

[randomuser42]

Exchanging a search engine that can easily identify you, and even easily track you, because you're paying for it, it not an upgrade. Google is awful, but you could always browse in a private browser, or if you made an account, you could use false information. But Kagi, you've given them positive identification, to easily associate you with everything.

I am never going to pay to search the Internet. I already pay my ISP for that privilege.

This very article spends several paragraphs describing its use of the open source privacy pass to enable anonymous authentication, including making searches even while logged out. You could pair this with a vpn and they won't know your real ip or who the account belongs to, only that someone with an account is making the search.

Searching in private mode on Google is a reasonable way to remove local traces of your search (for shared devices, for example). The idea that Google can't associate the activity with your account from the mountain of other information they have besides just your login cookie is naive.

 

[EnsconcedBehindAdBlock]

Kagi is great and I use it but the problem for 99% of people is that Google is just good enough as a free product.

They think that ignoring a few ads/AI nonsense (Google AI summaries are awful) is worth it compared to shelling out for a paid product that is only marginally better all things considered.

I wish Kagi the very best but we probably need an ad supported free search alternative for mass adoption.

Yeah, and just to add on to this, the fact that most people use google will lead to the de-emphasis of original sources, leading people to not produce those sources in the first place. I doubt kagi can remedy that situation by itself.

 

[LonM]

Given how much it can cost to run and develop LLMs (or outsource it to someone else), I would be willing to pay for an "ai-free" tier that is slightly cheaper than the default, with a guarantee that none of my money is going to be wasted on "AI", and will instead be used only on search, the product I actually wanted to pay for and use. Investment in building a new and independent search index is a far more valuable proposition than chasing after the latest trend, and as the web becomes ever more polluted by slop, if they can build an index that can prioritise real sites when no-one else can, that's where the money is.

 

[crmarvin42]

Every time I tell myself that $10/month isn’t that much and that I should just use Kagi, their subscription page reminds me that it comes with AI and I inevitably think “Well, $10 isn’t much, but couldn’t it be even cheaper without the AI bullshit?” and forget about it.

They added that AI feature after I was already a member for a while. The price did not go up, so while it possibly could be cheaper, it was worth the price before the AI features were added, and they don't change that calculation for me.

The AI is optional. You don't see it unless you invoke it in your query by appending a question mark to the end of a search. I didn't even know there was AI in Kagi until I put in a question mark on a query without thinking about it (cutting and pasting a question into the search box IIRC). And I think you can go into settings and disable it entirely if you wish, though I've not done that personally.

From a business perspective I get it. Every company needs to worry about investors, and a lot of investors think AI is going to make them all infinity dollars, so Kagi needs to show that they can do AI as well. Fortunately, they have implemented it in the least offensive way I can think of, sort of not implementing it at all. time will tell if that changes.

Fortunately, since I am a paying user of their service, if I leave because they've done something I find offensive, then it will actually hurt them financially. And since so many of their users sensibilities are like mine (willing to pay for search that works, and not interested in being the product), it is less likely they will chase share price increases (which is all this AI shit is about at search engines) at the expense of their sole revenue stream.

 

[graylshaped]

Great write-up. I'm choosing to stay with DDG's Bing-stanked offering for now, but consider this endorsement as worth keeping in mind.

That being said, inquiring minds want to know: how often does one need to search for "pierogis near me" ?

 

[Castellum Excors]

As a user of Kagi and Orion, I just want to point out that Kagi isn't very down with NSFW content in its image searching, after paying users complained early on.

 

[Ezzy Black]

I'm not having any issues with the AI workaround in Google search. I set up a new search engine in Firefox called Google Non-AI

https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14

It still seems to still work just fine. Just the blue links.

 

[cosmicvoid]

I've been using Kagi for over a year and a half and it's awesome. I can block entire domains (like spammy sites), there's no ads, and I see less SEO garbage. I really like how the AI quick answer is only generated when I include a "?" at the end of my search query, making it super useful for quick answers and I can dig deeper via the search results if needed. They also have a "Small Web" toggle so I can limit my search to smaller, personal websites.

 

[pokrface]

I'm not having any issues with the AI workaround in Google search. I set up a new search engine in Firefox called Google Non-AI

https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14

It still seems to still work just fine. Just the blue links.

I'm sure that'll continue to work indefinitely. Google has never eliminated or heavily altered a production product with no advance notification.

 

[pemmet]

"Awww!!! I Wanted a search engine!!"

With Kagi, you pay for the product using money. That's it! You give them some money, and you get some service—

"Woo Hoo!!!"

 

[Wheels Of Confusion]

That being said, inquiring minds want to know: how often does one need to search for "pierogis near me" ?

Only during their breeding season.

 

[crmarvin42]

You have to opt-in for the privacy features -which is locked behind the subscription- and opt-out of the AI features.

I don't know, this doesn't pass the smell test for me.

No, there are a lot of privacy features built in.

• The lack of an ad business that's whole job is to monetize the violation of your on-line privacy to the maximum extent possible.
• The lack of a stored search history (because they lack an ad business)
• The ability to delete your account and nuke everything they have on you should you decide to stop using their service

There are additional privacy features that one can opt into, largely because they are more work to use and set up, and so would deter folks uninterested in those features.

Also, you only see AI in your search by default if you put a question mark at the end of your query. I have only seen AI results on Kagi half a dozen times in the last year. A couple were on accident (copy/paste a question from somewhere else), and a couple were on purpose (low consequence for hallucination queries that are unlikely to be wrong in any case). I'd see more AI responses before lunch if I were still using google. My understanding of the "opt out" part is to disable the question mark trigger. It's so easy to not get AI results that I have not even bothered to do that because it is a non-issue.

 

[atfphotography]

Made the switch a year ago to the monthly $5 and couldn’t be happier with it.

A search engine giving actual search results. How quaint!

 

[pavon]

My main reservation in signing up for Kagi has been their revenue sharing agreement with Yandex. In addition to gradually building their own index and search, Kagi also uses a number of existing search backends, including Bing, Google, and Yandex. And they pay these companies for access, so a portion of your fee is supporting Yandex. I don't want them to censor or exclude Russian content but I don't want to be financially supporting a Russian company either, especially one that has ties to the government.

A caveat to this is that at the time the controversy about Kagi supporting Yandex broke out there were actually two Yandexes. The founder of Yandex, Arkady Volozh, left Russia in 2014 when they invaded Crimea, and had started working on making Yandex NV, a Dutch Holding company, more independent of Russia. This accelerated after Russia invaded Ukraine and by July 2024 he had relocated all Russian employees that wished to leave the country, sold off all Russian assets, severed ties with Russia and Yandex LLC, and renamed the remaining company the Nebius Group. The complaints about Kagi supporting Yandex occurred between these two events and it was never clear whether their deal was with Yandex NV or Yandex LLC, and whether Kagi continues to have a revenue sharing deal with Yandex LLC, or if it is now with Nebius. Instead they scrubbed most of the information about what backends they use from their website.

 

[huskcummerbund]

Kagi lets you prioritize or de-prioritize a website's prominence in your search results. You can even pin that site to the top of the screen or block it completely.

That line alone may be enough for me to try it out. I've wanted to completely delete Pinterest from my search results just because they are fucking useless. Breadth of an ocean, depth of a paper plate.

 

[Kroov]

I don't see AI summaries, nor advertisements on Google Search results, because I use uBlock Origin. I started using it to block (mal)vertising. When Google started pushing AI summaries, I added the filter to uBlock Origin to block those, too. When Google modified Chrome to gimp Add Ons like uBlock Origin, I switched from Chrome to Firefox, which doesn't impair it. What I see are the simple Google Search results, with none of the bloat.

 

[KingKrayola]

Kagi customer here. I like the idea that I'm paying for what I want (search results), and mostly get it, with no other agendas like 'engagement'. The best search engine should have the least 'engagement', surely?

I don't think the freemium/ad-supported model works anymore with expectations on revenue and page views.

 

[randomuser42]

That line alone may be enough for me to try it out. I've wanted to completely delete Pinterest from my search results just because they are fucking useless. Breadth of an ocean, depth of a paper plate.

You can always append -pinterest.com in your search (also on ddg, etc)

 

[pokrface]

By pure luck, I have been on the Internet since its birth. I have always been able to browse the internet without paying to search the Internet. Before search engines, they had index pages, for example. Search engines are an improvement, obviously, but also free. So I disagree with your belief that it is not an inherent right, because it always has been.

"By pure luck, I've been punching people in the face without consequences since birth. I have always been able to punch people in the face without consequences. So I disagree with your belief that punching people in the face without consequences is not an inherent right, because it always has been."

There is a hole in your logic, friend.

 

[EmphyrioDonk]

If it was European, I'd be tempted, but it's US based. Claiming to offer privacy has no meaning in the US. Pity, the idea sure has potential.

 

[Abulia]

So how well integrated are these alternate search engines on other devices? I don’t want to switch to Kagi or DDG on my main machine and have to fall back to Google on my iPad and iPhone every time I have to do a search there. I’m already having to bounce between browsers (Arc and mobile Safari); I don’t want to do it with search engines, too.

 

[randomuser42]

You have their word,...

You have the open source code for the extension that implements the privacy pass and, at the extreme, wireshark if you'd like to explicitly view what information is being shared between the kagi servers and your computer. But just the fact that you can perform the searches logged out in a private mode on a vpn limits their ability to associate you with an account.

 

[pokrface]

So how well integrated are these alternate search engines on other devices? I don’t want to switch to Kagi or DDG on my main machine and have to fall back to Google on my iPad and iPhone every time I have to do a search there. I’m already having to bounce between browsers (Arc and mobile Safari); I don’t want to do it with search engines, too.

You can do it on ios+safari with a little helper doodad.

 

[graylshaped]

So I disagree with your belief that it is not an inherent right, because it always has been.

"The first one is free," the man said.

 

[crmarvin42]

You have their word, and it is not like any corporation has ever said one thing, and done another, right? Right?

By pure luck, I have been on the Internet since its birth. I have always been able to browse the internet without paying to search the Internet. Before search engines, they had index pages, for example. Search engines are an improvement, obviously, but also free. So I disagree with your belief that it is not an inherent right, because it always has been.

You are being deliberately obtuse, conflating "browsing" with "Searching", which are not the same thing. And if you've been around since the dawn of the internet, you know that as well as the rest of us.

The ISP covers being able to connect to all those servers that have what you are looking for, but it does not cover telling which servers are worth connecting to. Anyone can still try to guess all possibly useful URL's to find what they are looking for (I remember doing that when we got our first modem), which is a form of search, and is also free, but it has no practical utility today. Search comes at a cost. Either in privacy (all free-to-use search engines, like google) or subscription (e.g. Kagi) or wasted time (guessing at urls, or maintaining ad-blocking).

There are trade-offs to each approach, but there is a price you are paying either way. Even if you ad-block the hell out of google, you are still paying the time and energy spent on installing and maintaining your ad-block set up, which is not a lot (run PiHole for general ad-block and Hush for YouTube), but it is also not nothing. Particularly when google is going out of its way to try and circumvent those ad-block services, as it was doing a couple of weeks over the summer on YouTube.

 

[KevinM1]

If you want to use Google without Google tracking you, just use Mullvad Leta. It's a search proxy for Brave and Google without the AI crap.

 

[randomuser42]

Kargi, you've not only created an account, but included your full name, address, billing information, and all linked to your search.

Kagi only asks for an email address (which can be a burner) and you could pay with Bitcoin.