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I apologize if this is old news, but I just noticed it. It looks like Kagi has added Fediverse Forums as a default Web search option.
Cool. Wish more search engines would do that.
But, as far as Kagi goes, it's a paid service and it's an American company. So I won't be using them.
What non-american search engine do you use?
I write questions on bathroom stalls and then check back in on them every few days.
Why are you using Grindr Classic for search?
I ask friends who are more intelligent than me
And if they don't know I assume it is forbidden knowledge that would drive me mad to know
(I am only half joking)
https://metager.org/ is run by a German non-profit. Since late last year it's pay to use because their advertising partner (Yahoo) cancelled their contract without warning. But it's cheaper than Kagi. Also the non-profit is part of the project that's building the European OpenWebIndex ( https://ows.eu/ ) that's releasing this year.
Qwant. It's French.
Search engine? I started rawdoging urls a while ago.
The internet is increasingly more useless, the sites i really need are bookmarked anyway.
And I like swiss cheese on my ham sandwiches. Oh, sorry, I thought we were just saying non sequitors.
In all seriousness, that is not an answer to the question. Yes, some (often older) people will always use a search engine to find the same website they browse all the time. But search engines are also incredibly valuable for finding new things or verifying claims. I have a bookmark for the Warframe wiki but that doesn't help me when I want to research different monitor energy efficiencies or find a repair guide for my toaster oven.
And while people CAN collect a set of (searchable) websites for different topics they are interested in... that is how we got into (one of) our current mess(es). How many people just use reddit for everything and thus make themselves vulnerable to corporate shittery and misinformation campaigns.
That's three paragraphs of "I took this serious."
Oh- oh!
That's, uh... A sentence!
Did i win?
Does anyone use yacy?
Startpage.com
Better than qwant in my opinion.
Not using Kagi because its an American company is valid. But people are too used to products that are free because they make the person using them the product. There is still a transaction with a free product.
Kagi is not free because they respect your privacy and don't sell your data.
I'd happily pay for search, but Kagi is way too expensive.
10 searches a day, for $5/month? (US)
Like, that is way too much.
I can receive thousands and send thousands of emails per day for that price. Is search really that much more expensive?
$10/m is unlimited searches though...
And yeah, searches are actually quite expensive. There's a LOT of infrastructure that goes into making something unique with your own search engine that isn't just a wrapper over Google.
The actual compute cost per search, in 2024, was $0.0125. Kagi states they want to keep Costa below $0.015 per search, but their search partners are a major expense.
That ofc ignores all the supporting infra, devs, support....etc that goes into making it all possible.
The business model just doesn't make sense then (using search partners).
Because $60, let alone $120 US, a year is far more than most people would be willing to pay.
Dunno what to say, it's just more than most people can justify paying for the service.
I'm gonna stick with DuckDuckGo and the newly free mullvad cached search
I mean, the business model works? They make money, they pay staff, and they are growing.
I don't know what you're talking about, people have price sensitivity of course. You are projecting yours onto "everyone", is it not a successful business?
There's a niche they cater to, if you are not that niche then you are not that niche. Doesn't mean the niche doesn't exist.
Sure, but I'm still feeling like complaining that there isn't a business that's made affordable pay-to-search a thing. (That I know of)
I'm not taking back that $120 USD/year for search is way more than most people would be willing to pay
Though yeah, I suppose saying their business model isn't working was hyperbolic, I must admit.
There are plenty of paid products that do not respect your privacy and sell your data.
And there's free products that do respect your privacy and don't make you the product. They are community products.
For instance I offer my bandwidth and storage to thousands of strangers to share torrents and they do the same to me. No secondhand transactions happening.
But people are too used to products that are free because they make the person using them the product.
That's definitely one model for operating a public service, but its far from the only one.
I don't use them or never read their privacy policy so i don't know. But it's not because it's a paid service that company won't use your data to sell it for more profit. That's EXTRA profit for them, so why the hell not. And them being based in the US means I already can't trust them with their poor privacy laws.
I have donated €1500 to opensource software projects and paid a whopping €7 for software. These (privacy respecting) projects got my money because they weren't transaction based. Capitalism is not the only way.
Writing them off as an American company is totally valid, but I'm happy to pay for a quality service because it keeps ads out and lets me vote with my money. It's really not much to cling to psychologically, but it helps. When I and others completely degoogle our lives it moves no needles at GoogHQ, but paying subscriber metrics are a KPI discussed in every board room in the world.
Lile they say, perfection is the enemy of privacy! Kagi has been the best as an engine out of all I've tried. If a better competitors comes up, I'll give em my money.
I'm not a fan of Kagi's founder, so I generally don't use it.
Any specific reasons? I'm a very happy Kagi user and the founder is active on their discord and seems like a really nice guy.
There was this debacle, at least
Hmm yeah I was aware of that but personally didn't see it as a reason not to like Kagi.. Lori came across as quite drama seeking without solid arguments imho. Thanks for the response!
It's had it for at least months but even if its years old it's still a cool feature and deserves attention
If someone is interested about Kagi vs Google (made by Kagi): https://mastodon.social/@kagihq/113971972586118949
I’ve been using Kagi for about a month now, and I think I’m gonna stick with it. Paying with dollars instead of data/attention feels more healthy for everyone involved.
(Fully realizing, of course, that there’s nothing stopping them from doing both, and that’s why we need better laws. Voting with your wallet will never be a complete solution… but it is something I can do right now.)
Just came across https://d-shoot.net/kagi.html . Seems like there are more good reasons to avoid it besides it also using Yandex as an index.
I encourage subscribers to go make themselves heard on this post if you support being able to disable particular indexes such as Yandex.
I think when I tried them out a while back they also had a usenet search? Can anyone clarify on this?
They do.
Not sure if you use that feature but does it work like an indexer and allow direct downloads of "Linux isos"?
Kagi is shaping up to be really cool with this and the Orion browser supporting firefox/chrome extensions on ios.
Been using this for a month or so its nice
Does it work on lemmy content too?
Edit: thanks all!
ive been finding lemmy content on duckduckgo and other engines for a while now. dont intend to try kagi tho so cant answer your question.
Surprisingly I’ve had zero Lemmy results in my searches.
Probably because my searches aren’t “Tell me why Linux is so cool”. Lol.
Cool, but I will still prefer to use duckduckgo and type Lemmy in the end of my query.
this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2025
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