Kagi Introducing Fair Pricing
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This sounds like FUD. Do you have a source for that?
Before that, they claimed they were simply too insignificant to even be eligible for VAT.
How is this FUD when you just said they admitted to it?
Exemptions vary by country, but often they only apply to small businesses.
Often there's no right to any exemptions anyway if your company isn't headquartered in the country (and Kagi is from USA).Either way you only have to pay VAT on transactions made after you go over the limit, while Kagi admitted they have to settle unpaid taxes.
This situation can only happen if they didn't pay the taxes they already legally owed.See: https://kagifeedback.org/d/3592-march-19th-2024-introducing-sales-taxes
Kagi will have to retroactively pay for all sales tax/VAT that we did not collect in the last almost two years. We have chosen to absorb this on behalf of our customers.
They tried to make themselves look like the good guys, while in reality they just paid back their overdue taxes they were required to collect all this time.
Not knowing the tax rules is not an excuse.
If they wanna do business internationally they can afford to hire an accountant.Information on this is extremely intransparent however, so this might be wrong.
It's not "extremely intransparent", it's just a little complicated.
And accountants are really cheap for small businesses. -
If I had your use case I'd cancel the while thing and only use their free plan, at this rate you're covered for 9 months or so
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Isn't this just the path of an immature company?
There's a guy who is probably a programmer and he makes a thing, starts trying to sell it. Nothing here stands out as bad intentions, it just makes me think of what it might look like if I tried to start a company (a lot of stumbling).
Plus the blog post is pretty clear it's their personal views. They spend a lot of time talking about the AI crap but when using Kagi it seems less intrusive than Google, and you can turn it off.
I dunno, I've seen this blog posted around a few times and there isn't anything in here that puts me off so long as I treat it as what it is, a subscription for that month, not an investment in the future. If the company goes bankrupt because the CEO spent investors' money starting a t-shirt company then I'll just use a different search when they shut down.
Probably worth noting I use a relay email address not my main one, but I do that for almost everything.
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Oh yeah, I'm never buying a subscription. I'm still on the trial, it's been more than 6 months already. But I would pay them something for occasional use of their search engine.
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There are no US troops in Palestine
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What about weapons? Money buy those too. Or that doesn't count for your moral principles?
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Same for me. It's like going back to the dark ages.
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I self host my own SearXNG instance on a Oracle free tier 1core/1GB ram vps. It's fast enough for me and it's free
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US weapons are defending Ukraine as we speak.
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So they cancel each other? Do you get a choice when you pay a US company to state that those taxes will need to go to Ukraine and not Israel?
Also there is a quantitative difference:
- yandex is a small % of kagi cost, of that a small percentage will go to Russian government (directly or indirectly) and of those money a part will go into military.
- kagi is US based, and Google is their main cost center. So if you consider a 10$ subscription a much much bigger chunk will go to US companies or people - who also live in US and spend money there, generating taxes. A part of all these money will go into weapons sent to Israel (or to bomb Somalia, etc.). A part will also go to Ukraine, which for the broken watch theory is one of the few times US military expense is used for something good (probably worth some caveats but OK).
Can you please elaborate what causes for you to perceive these two facts as completely different?
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Russians directly kill, rape, and torture Ukrainians. To compare this to a country that only sells weapons to Israel (and Ukraine too) is real dishonest.
It's a false equivalence
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US gives (incl. donating) weapons to Israel with the precise purpose of those being used in the current massacres. Also let's not forget this is an absolutely momentary perspective. US was invading, torturing and bombing civilians until few years ago.
Now, I won't claim it is equivalent, because it's not and frankly doesn't matter: if your morals say that one is OK and the other is not then I will simply disagree with those morals.
To me a moral argument is based on principles: if I don't want my money to be spent on killing people, it doesn't matter much if the killing happens slightly indirectly. Solid principles don't hide behind thin layers of deniability.
So, I would expect someone with ironclad morals that want to avoid a small and indirect amount of money that to end up to Russia to also recognize that if the money go to the US government they have a pretty nice chance to also to result in people being killed (or right now to fund deportations etc.).
However, I am interested in your perspective. You have stressed a lot on the two things not being equal, maybe you can explain how this difference changes everything for you, and makes one okay while the other unacceptable. -
But the money going to the US also prevents Ukrainians being killed. Not to mention that wiping out Hamas and Hezbollah actually makes Israeli civilians safer.
In both cases, the US gives weapons to the country attacked by another party. In a more global context, Israel is fighting against Iranian proxies in the Middle East. Iran has been giving drones to Russia that kill Ukrainians.
So the US being involved indirectly in conflicts against the "Central Powers" of Russia, Iran and North Korea is actually a positive contribution.
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Ufff that's a brave moral stance to have. You do you, I completely disagree with it though.
Thanks for elaborating anyway.
I hope you can at least see how a person from another country might have a similar perspective as you, but reversed, therefore demanding kagi (or other companies) not to give money to US. Not everyone will have this US-centric perspective.
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I have a Ukraine-centric perspective, not US-centric
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Fair enough, hopefully you can see how someone from - say - Lebanon would see it differently.
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Lebanon was taken over by Hezbollah that was actually stronger than their nation's military
Iran's proxies did not have popular support everywhere
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Sure bro, and if you are a lebanese civilian who sees bombs killing your family I am sure you think of all the good impact that those have and thank Israel and the US.
I will close it here, I have no intention to convince you and there is no chance that someone who supports Israel will convince me of any moral argument.
