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>.

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[lancemartini]

I'm a paid user of Kagi. I also use their Orion browser. The cool thing about Orion is that you can use Chrome/Firefox extensions with it, like ublock origin (but you mostly don't need to because that same functionality is built in).

 

[Frodo Douchebaggins]

I won't use Kagi because (a) they'll just hand over suicide advice without making any attempt to provide support to maybe dissuade people

there's a joke to be made here about how we choose which hills to die on. A tasteless joke, perhaps, but nonetheless the opening is there.

 

[crmarvin42]

I do however see wisdom in warning people that paying for a search engine is not a good idea. Nothing I have said is false. It does not take a rocket scientist to know that identifying yourself to a search engine is not a wise idea.

You are assuming that there is no separation between being a search engine and being a privacy invading machine. The only reason those two things are intrinsically linked, is that until now search engines have made their money exclusively from advertising revenue, which incentivizes degradation of privacy to increase ad rates.

Kagi does not have an advertising business, and so have no financial incentive to build a dossier on your search history.

I'm going to link to their privacy page again. I suggest you go take a few minutes and actually read it. It is not long.

 

[islane]

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.

That is incredibly scummy and greasy of them. Some searching (via Duck and Google) seems to confirm this and even suggests that they may still be supporting the Russian Yandex. This is bad enough that I am not going to even consider a test drive of this search engine - that's a bummer because I was sold on it by the end of Lee's article. I may not be in the streets shouting "Slava Ukraini", but I'm sure as hell not knowingly supporting any Russian business backing the Putin-regime. For the uninitiated: Yandex was forced to bring in pro-Putin leadership in the late 2010's, Yandex supports the Putin invasion of Ukraine, and even went so far as to display maps showing Ukraine absorbed by Russia.

TL,DR - Fuck Yandex. That company is pro-Putin and pro-fascism. Don't support Kagi unless they openly move away from Yandex and provide some reciepts to prove it.

 

[ashypans]

I will give this a try, but what I really need is for one of these google search alternatives to implement an equivalent to the google scholar search feature. There are a few stand alone scholar alternatives out there but I have yet to see a good search alternative that also carries a scholar search feature.

 

[pokrface]

It's really hard to take seriously a 'technology editor' who uses/used both Google search and Chrome.

Why?

Edit for clarity — My daily driver has been Firefox since it was called "Phoenix," but Conde and Ars both use GSuite + Google docs extensively, so Chrome has been an annoying presence in my life for at least a decade so that I can actually use the services properly without having to fake my user agent string. I gotta be able to work.

As noted in the piece, I'm in the process of finally divorcing myself from Chrome and switching to Brave, but Brave's shitty crypto ties are really, really grossing me out.

 

[randomuser42]

You're valuable, as is all your data and your search history

To advertisers. Advertisers obviously find this data valuable because it allows them to advertise which is difficult to do on a site without advertisements.

 

[randomuser42]

Why?

Real technology nerds program their own search engine in assembly language on each boot.

 

[crmarvin42]

Why? Money.

Corporation should teach you 1 thing - they want as much money as fast as possible, without any end in sight. Many corporations believe in endless growth, which is technically impossible, but that has not stopped any corporation from trying to achieve just that.

You're valuable, as is all your data and your search history. If you think a corporation will never cash you in as their product, I'd call you naive.

Ok, so how does Kagi make money off of building a profile WITHOUT an ad business?

You sound like the fucking underpants gnomes here:

1. Collect data
2. ?
3. Profit

For google and all other engines with an ad business, that "?" is filled in with "sell advertising based on the data". What is it for Kagi?

I don't trust any company. I trust incentives. If I know a companies incentives, I can predict with reasonable accuracy what they will do. For google et al, my privacy is a business obstacle for them. for Kagi it is not. At least not by any incentives I am aware of. If you know different, then tell us how they might monetize that data without an ad business?

 

[Spencer314]

The problem with Google AI companion is less that it hallucinates (at this point, I just use the links at the end of its paragraphs to find the relevant information I am looking for). The problem is that 90% of Google users don't seem to get that Google AI companion hallucinates, and does so to an almost ludicrous degree. Real humans are relying on this stuff, and it is absolutely junk. So, those of us who have figured that out are sharing a world with an overwhelming population of humans who haven't figured that out, many of whom likely never will. Kagi just isn't going to fix that. Also, so much of the web that AI has been trained on is collapsing because users aren't clicking on links, which is a problem that Kagi can't even make the slightest dent in.

In a sane world, governments would put a stop to this AI-slop enshittification, and would force dedicated AI engines and search engines to be separate companies simply out of anti-trust concerns. In our current (at least in the US) insane world, our government is far more likely to simply force search and AI engines to comply with their white christian nationalism (a move which our current fearless leader has actually suggested several times, even if he didn't use those exact words).

 

[LordDaMan]

I'm more than a little disenfranchised with Firefox after they clearly caved to someone's influence/$ and removed the ReviewChecker feature. What would you consider the best browser?

I've settled on edge myself. Right mix of working features and websites actually working.

Tried firefox, but frankly the web right now is designed around a chrome based browser (or at least blink/chrominum). Tried the firefox forks, but like I said they are all mostly the same exact thing Did like Florp's overall look, name (best browser name ever!) and design but being firefox based in runs into the same problems as Firefox, only in a much better UI. Really loved vivaldi, but it kept getting weird slowdowns. Opera offers nothing different

 

[thenamenottaken]

Paying Kagi to develop AI features while hoping they keep letting you disable AI features seems not much better than using another search engine and some trick or other to avoid the AI. Would be very interested in something Kagi-like but without AI ambitions.

 

[crmarvin42]

Terms change all the time, and just because they claim to be your privacy buddy today, does not mean they're not going to screw you, tomorrow.

this is an absolutely asinine response.

Yes, the terms can change, and when they do I (and likely most other Kagi users) will stop paying them. But UNTIL THEN I will be benefiting from what they are doing TODAY.

In fact, large corporations exploit the fact that most people do not read or understand the fine print. They could change it right now, and you may not even notice.

Their entire brand is wrapped up in the fact that they don't track you. That is one of their primary differentiations. If they were to start tracking us for the purposes of selling our data, what would be the reason for me to keep paying them? It would be business model suicide.

That does not mean it couldn't' happen, but if/when it does I can stop doing my searches with them and stop paying them my subscription fee, and I will STILL be better off than I would have been using google between now and then.

This isn't a purity test. it is a less of all evils situation. Name a search engine that is better than Kagi with regards to privacy?

 

[fancysunrise]

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.

For many it's not a matter of choosing to pay or not pay (directly) for search like you would a sandwich at the corner. Many don't have the patience or trust or attention or concern to do that. More importantly, many don't have the financial or logistical means to do that. Children, struggling adults, person who lost their card, traveler, guest on a different computer or at the library, on a machine that can't easily log in to something fro various technical reasons etc. etc.

Google is always, always available with internet access. There is friction in terms of the use of the product, but not any barriers outright. Something like Kagi will always be a niche as a result. It will never be the norm.

 

[GiantRacoonPanda]

While you had to go back to Google for one search on a rare occasion, people who read about this exception should not be deterred from exploring alternatives to Google. Even Google has to be supplemented by other search engines now and then despite being seen as the benchmark. It’s just sad that most people don’t even consider other search engines and think that, if Google couldn’t come up with anything, nobody could.

 

[kvndoom]

It's a goddamn shame we would have to pay a 3rd party to get what is basically Google from 20 years ago.

 

[FragrantFlatulence]

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.

Kagi had an AMA in June that addressed this issue and also discussed some of their viewpoints on the business of standing up a web index and why they aren’t planning on making a full web index (cost). They do index some sites as part of their “small web” initiative.

Anyway, I found the AMA very interesting.


View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XbmMUGSFldQ

 

[Danellicus]

lost relevance

 

[Chai T. Rex]

The links in a monospace font in the article cannot be clicked on.

 

[herko]

I'm never going to use Kagi because I don't want to pay for search. Its privacy protections - or lack thereof - are irrelevant to me.

That said, the post a couple of pages ago by a mod which essentially said "I pay for premium and have access to all these chatbots! Look at the results I get from the bot made by an unabashed white supremacist!" is not a flex.

The reason I highlighted Grok is because de-twittered, it's a decent model, and I find it interesting that it can be; I also put it up because it shows how Kagi gives you access to not-the-frontrunners (including previews!) as well as ChatGPT, Claude, and Google Gemini. You also have Qwen, Mistral, DeepSeek, and a few more.

It's a great playground for trying out pretty much ALL the models, without paying for premium access to each because you get it as part of the subscription.

I don't care for Elon Musk, at all. You're jumping at shadows.

 

[Anoff]

I feel the energy of this article (frustration) in my soul. The rapid acceleration of enshittification/late stage capitalism has made so much of the internet feel like a dystopian hellscape with a bleak future, it's nice to read about some (hell any) companies that aren't just bending over their users for fisting

 

[puzzled]

I have been using DDG without their AI and find it usable for what I need. I signed up to a Kagi trial and immediately when to their subscription page. Determined that if I paid up front it would cost me $113.40 a year since they charge GST, apparently. I have no idea whether that is in Canadian or US fund. I had to dig deeper and it appears that $113.40 is US funds which $157.33 CAD a year for search which sorry to say is harder for me to stomach.

 

[Lythimus]

I used Neeva for a while, which was also a subscription-based own-index search engine. They shut down around June 2023 because people just weren't willing to change their search engine. Has AI summaries really changed the landscape so much that people are willing to switch now or is Kagi likely going to meet the same fate as Neeva?

 

[Edubfromktown]

I haven't used Google search in many years. Duckduckgo ($bing$) results have steadily been going downhill. I'm game to give this a try.

Thanks for creating such an informative article.

 

[warblob]

I've used Kagi for over a year. I've gotten my wife (not easy) and a coworker to use it as well. Yes, they leverage other indexes, and I wish they didn't. That said, I think the trade off is worth it. Using Kagi is a loud and clear "fuck you" to Google. If enough people sign up, I would love to see how they squirm and jump.

As far as using Kagi goes--it's my daily driver. It doesn't wow me, but it doesn't annoy me either. Which honestly is exactly what a search engine should do.

Long live Kagi. Or at least, until the money-grubbing-tech-black-holes-of-1%-wealth-and entitlement-take-note. In other words, MGTBH1WETN.

 

[drinkingcoffee]

Every time I search using Google on my work computer, I'm reminded why I pay for kagi.

I did try ddg a bunch of times over the years, but always found the results pretty mediocre, but YMMV.

I would like it if they had a no-ai subscription tier, but it's not a deal-breaker for me, as they don't seem to be pushing it on users at all.

 

[gosand]

Yeah to be fair that is also the case with DuckDuckGo. Even Firefox has their own built in LLM chatbot integration now.

I am happy with the perfectly cromulent DDG search, I have been using it for a couple of years now. I only use google for maps, because i love me some street view.

And to continue the Simpsons references, I deal with AI search results by taking a tip from Mr. Paul Anka!

 

[NorthGuy]

Good analysis on the corporate structure, that's what I was looking for.

Don't confuse paying for a product with companies not treating you like the product. Cable companies were notorious for this, you got to pay to be the product they marketed to advertisers, which is the most efficient form of Capitalism. The second you start paying for a service is the second they move to this model, which is why Amazon has already and Netflix will eventually scrap it's ad free tier.

 

[randomuser42]

It's a goddamn shame we would have to pay a 3rd party to get what is basically Google from 20 years ago.

The thing is unless it's a charity a free search engine that's like Google 20 years ago will be inevitably heading down the same path as Google 20 years ago.

 

[archtop]

I loled several times reading this article -- well done!

 

[Wheaty73]

I had just switched over to Startpage, which was OK, but had an annoying habit of after loading the search results it would then AS YOU WERE ABOUT TO CLICK, load "sponsored results", right above the results, thus making sure your click landed on those. Screw that. Tried Kagi for most of the morning and it appears pretty useful compared to G/B/Startpage. Probably a subscriber in a day or so...

 

[kvndoom]

The thing is unless it's a charity a free search engine that's like Google 20 years ago will be inevitably heading down the same path as Google 20 years ago.

True, and ya know I remember the night at work when news broke that Google bought YouTube. I told my coworker "it's all downhill from here because Google's #1 job here on out, is to make the site that uses the most bandwidth on the internet profitable."

And look at it now...