Kagi has quickly grown into something of a household name within tech circles. From Hacker News and Lobsters to Reddit, the search provider seems to attract near-universal praise. Whenever the topic of search engines comes up, there’s an almost ritual rush to be the first to recommend Kagi, often followed by a chorus of replies echoing the endorsement.

Kagi has quickly grown into something of a household name within tech circles. From Hacker News and Lobsters to Reddit, the search provider seems to attract near-universal praise. Whenever the topic of search engines comes up, there’s an almost ritual rush to be the first to recommend Kagi, often followed by a chorus of replies echoing the endorsement.

  • okr765AEnglish
    23·
    9 hours ago

    I used Kagi for a year then switched back to DDG after I had concerns with privacy. Where you can ensure DDG isn’t getting your data by using a trusted VPN and a fingerprint-resistant browser, you are forced into a “trust me bro” situation with Kagi due to the need to verify your account subscription. Kagi’s proposed solution for this is privacy pass, but this article calls that into question as well. Privacy pass must also prevent you from using the customization in Kagi due to the supposed privacy benefits, which takes more away from the reason you would use Kagi in the first place. I do find it odd how a proprietary paid search engine seems to get such a large amount of praise within privacy communities when there are fundamental challenges in making a paid search engine actually private.

    • athairmor@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      7 hours ago

      Yeah, I don’t think it’s nearly as popular as this blog post makes it out to be. I kind of doubt it or any paid search engine will ever get widespread adoption.

    • RageAgainstTheRich@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      8 hours ago

      I have been using duckduckgo too. I currently use Ecosia because while not private, you gain seeds (points) every day by using the search engine and then plant trees and fight against climate change.

      I still use duckduckgo when searching anything private.

      • Humanius@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        6 hours ago

        I’m currently using Ecosia as well, because they are working together with Qwant on a European search index. I want to support that.

    • baduhai@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      2·
      7 hours ago

      I do find it odd how a proprietary paid search engine seems to get such a large amount of praise within privacy communities when there are fundamental challenges in making a paid search engine actually private.

      I think it’s because of the incentives of a paid search engine. I don’t pay for kagi myself, but I think the idea is that if you’re paying for the product, they don’t have much of an incentive to monetise your data, only to use it for legitimate uses.

      Whether or not that is true is the question, though.