Kagi Introducing Fair Pricing

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My wife is Ukrainian. I will leave it at that.

I have also a colleague from Afghanistan, for example, guess what their opinion is (and the list could be long, I just happen to have a colleague from there).

I remember Yandex being brought up during the Brave debacle, and I don't remember them claiming anything of the sort. I think they simply stated the position that choosing search providers based on moral claims would simply lead to them being able to use only the niche search providers.

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This old blog post summarises a lot of pain points:
https://d-shoot.net/kagi.html

Similar to Brave (and more recently Proton) I simply can't trust them, despite liking the idea of their respective services.

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I'm sure she would find equivocating the US with Russia very reasonable

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I am repeating data points they shared during the community event.

BTW buddy, you can cool it with the passive-aggressiveness. Not everyone on the internet is out to get you.

The info about them breaking even at 25k was shared in the discord channel (which I very rarely look). The rest are stats that are published on their website and as I said shared during the yearly community event.

I work in tech, and I would be blind to acknowledge that a company which:

is profitable/breaks even after few years of operation
does that with 25k users
doesn't have a marketing budget (used to, now they might have a ridiculously small one).

Might be a healthy business, different from 99% of tech companies that generally bleed money even with millions of users.

You seem completely sure of the opposite, whatever, don't use their service lol

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I've been searching for an alternative search engine. Found Searx to be subpar.

Was thinking about Kagi, but if they work with the russians, that's an immediate no go for me.

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She doesn't, but that's my whole point: it's a personal perspective. If you ask a person from Palestine, Vietnam, many places in South America, Yemen, Iraq, etc. their gripes would be different from my own, which as an Italian are different already from my wife's etc.

So which moral claims do you accommodate? The obvious answer is everyone's, by allowing each user to choose where indirectly give money. However this is apparently technically hard, so either you shut down or you simply decide that you can't accommodate any, and make good in other areas (I.e. through privacy-preserving services).

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Do you use any other search engine?

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You can cool it with accusing me of being passive-aggressive, I think I've been completely fair to you. You can definitely not call me 'buddy', and you can stop acting like a victim here.

You have to agree that it's strange that you're putting so much energy into something you don't have a monetary interest in. This is very unusual behavior for some random dude on the internet. You must see that. You don't seem stupid, but you definitely seem incentivized.

So let's both acknowledge that you're getting paid to do this and that I'm not.

I also work in tech. I'm not sure why you'd be working so hard for a company that you claim isn't paying you. You're worth more than this homeboy.

So, I'm going to assume that you are working for them. Wouldn't you? So please, again, tell me everything you think you know about Kagi. I'm really curious.

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Vlad wrote it to me in their chat. Screenshot here: https://ioc.exchange/@troed/113311981054448887

Ask your wife whether she thinks people should send money to Russia. Now, Yandex is politically twisting the truth in their search results, but I care less about that than the fact that I'll happily send money to Ukraine but there's no way in hell I'm sending money to Russia.

Being a Kagi subscriber means you are. Morally - I'm not ok with it. In some nations it might even be against the law. Sanctions, you know. I'm not even sure Kagi is legally in the clear here.

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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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Kagi Introducing Fair Pricing