Kagi Introducing Fair Pricing

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Let me explain it to you:

first comment with meta-statements about down votes (I didn't downvote, but still shows the tone)
one comment in: "how many figures you get"
two comments in: "I feel like I am talking with a secret operative".

Now, you might think everyone is stupid, but it doesn't take that much that all these statements are passive aggressive and they are a way to insinuate your interlocutor is arguing in bad faith or for ulterior motives.

so much energy into something you don't have a monetary interest in

I don't agree. First because it's little effort, if any. I am right now taking a dump and tapping on my phone.
Second, by the same logic your commitment would show also financial incentive? So are you paid by Google to smear competitors?

I instead think that we are simply commenting on stuff that we are interested in. I want kagi to succeed, of course, and I do because it's a great product but much more importantly because I want their business model to succeed. I want more and more companies adopting it and stop thinking that fucking over users is the only way to make money. From this perspective, sure, I am invested because I want a healthy tech industry which works for humans and their rights.

Not that I have to justify anything anyway.

BTW, if you start every conversation with the mindset that "everyone who disagrees with me must be paid by whom I am accusing", I hardly think you can consider yourself fair. As I said, using your own logic I need to assume you work for Google or Microsoft and are paid by them to smear competitors.

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I just can't believe you put so much energy into defending a profit-generating company WITHOUT COMPENSATION. You could argue that someone would have to be stupid to participate in the industry that we do, but it's another thing to defend these companies without any compensation. I don't disrespect you, but it's sad. I hope you can do better for yourself. Good luck homeboy. I think you're better than this.

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I will give you more data points. I live in Estonia, and just now Estonia is disconnecting the power grid to Russia. It means that just by turning on my light, I might give (have given) some money to an actual Russian company. Let alone knowing which companies use Russian gas or other resources etc.

There are choices that personally make sense, I refused a job at a Yandex spinoff - israeli-russian company, for example.
In this case the amount of money is so small, so indirect, that I personally accept the fact of giving money to Yandex - of which a small portion I assume ends in taxes and a portion of that ends up in weapons that will be used to kill Ukrainians is nothing different from buying a product that I am unaware was produced by a company which uses some Russian import. However, using kagi I can at least positively contribute to other aspects that for me are important in the world, like for example the protection of privacy. For this, I even accept to give money to Google and Microsoft, despite they are companies that made incalculable damages to society, and also pay (little) taxes and work directly with the US military, which means some money also ends up in weapons that are used to kill Palestinians (today).

Now, everyone has their own moral scale, so I completely understand if for someone this is unacceptable. That said, their technical reason why they don't have an easy way for people to choose search backend is reasonable, and if we go to the point where they shouldn't use X for moral reasons than they wouldn't be able to use yandex, bing, google, brave (and maybe something else). In fact, using Kagi itself means paying taxes in US.

So to me their current approach is the only reasonable outcome. If for someone the tiny amount of indirect money is worse than the benefit (not personal, but collective) of fostering a healthy tech company, boost privacy etc. then they can reasonably make the decision to not pay for the service. Painting not doing so as "supporting Russia" though is disingenuous IMHO (I am saying in general).

Funny note, my wife also uses and loves Kagi, and not because she doesn't care about the work or her family (who thankfully is in a safe-ish area).

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"You can't call me buddy" - proceeds to call "homeboy".

I explained my reasons, if you disagree or you decided not to read them it is your problem. Keep your compassion for those who need it.

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Lots of western companies have divested from working with/in Russia even though it has cost them lots of money. Some because that's a legal requirement (sanctions), some because it's the right thing to do.

Not doing so is supporting Russia.

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Changed my mind, you are an idiot. My bad.

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From how I understand it, VAT only applies from a certain amount of revenue, so they didn't have to pay it before but do now. Could be wrong though

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That’s a brilliant idea to keep reporting users who abandoned the service as active users.

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There are a ton of imports that are not (yet) sanctioned, and therefore tons of companies that did not divest.

As I mentioned, when possible or equivalent I absolutely support the choice. In this case, there are conflicting benefits and everyone can do their choices based on the way they value the different benefits.

This obviously can't be an absolute moral argument, otherwise residing in US or Russia (or UAE, or China and many many more countries) would be immoral ipso facto, and same for buying any product made by any company in those countries.
The globalized world makes this basically impossible.

Anyway, I feel we are going in circles now, so I will close it here.

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"Oh no, a person who didn't demonstrate any quality worth of respect so far is calling me names".
Spare the effort, insults only work when someone values your opinion. You clearly demonstrated not being able to even argue your opinion.

Now I will block you and go earn my salary lobbying in other threads /s

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You seem angry. Wanna talk?

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The real fair pricing would've been to only charge for the credits you actually use.

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Seems such a weird edge case to me. If I pay for a search engine you can rely on me using it as my primary search engine. And I search the Internet daily, and certainly monthly. So this change wouldn't help me at all

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I wish they'd offer an llm free version with no cap on searches. Their products are too expensive and it feels like it is mostly to pay for the llms. I can’t justify paying that much for a product I am never going to use.

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They do. The $10/month search plan is unlimited.

The only LLM stuff in their search product is the quick answers which can be turned off and page summaries which you have to explicitly click on in a submenu in any case.

As someone aware of how limited LLMs are, I've found both of these features to be useful at times for gauging whether a site is worth visiting or not which is part of the core feature set of a search engine IMHO.

A good while back they claimed that Google search index fees make up the vast majority of their costs, so I doubt any of your money is going towards LLM BS unless you actually pay for their assistant product.

I'd expect the development of all of their product to be mostly funded by VC. If they can get VC idiots who fell for the """AI""" hype to subsidise building an actually useful thing (the search product), that's a win in my book, even if they also have to build the AI crap on the side to keep said VC idiots happy.

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Kind cool to see a profitable company like that. I worked on a place that for years was burning millions of dollars every month in hopes of eventually making it work out

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SearXNG ftw ! Also , who the heck stop using an entire month a search engine. Maybe in very isolated cases like vacations, or medic leaves, but come on...

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Which instance do you use? Or do you selfhost it? It has been hit and miss for me. Not sure if I’m doing it wrong

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After reading that essay I feel a lot more queasy about using Kagi. It's just that I really despise ads, but I'm willing to put up with it, if the search engine company is more ethical.
For the moment I've downgraded my account from 10 to 5 bucks a month. I wasn't using any of the AI features anyway.

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I started using it on instances, like other WebApps example invidious, but instances get constantly banned and sometimes you can't use them or rely on them. So yes I selfhosted it. You don't need any special hardware. Docker is very simple to use . I even went further and used an old laptop as server with Linux , installed tailscale everywhere and using funnel (or server if you don't want to expose to internet) got my own domain , with certs, with reverse proxy in one shot. It's a f miracle . Tailscale has full documentation and step by steps guides. I just followed those. If you want to make it even simpler, install proxmox and use containers . They are like tiny Linuxes with their own Mac, IP , etc

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Kagi Introducing Fair Pricing