This is a tough article to talk about, at least for me. I tend to visit this forum only to ridiculously speculate about interesting tech companies and talk about the software I like. Kagi’s relationship with Yandex/Russia is good talks because at least it hasn’t lead to conclusions about whether Vlad personally supports Russia’s war in Ukraine.
This post dumps a laundry basket’s worth of criticism varying from petty to legitimate (in some places both) about the business of Kagi and some of it can induce personal judgements about Vlad.
Vlad should apply the socially austere philosophy that he has to his business to his public persona. I understand why he’d feel the need to stick up for himself in this case; as a human being considering how seamless the attack on his business leads to what can be perceived as an attack on his own character, but the way he’s going about it is uncouth. First your emails get subpoenaed, then submitted into court, then you die, then the public get access to them and shares them on social media, then we get to debate about whether you’re unscrupulous. Or consider appointing someone else to explain the company’s values. I don’t think the public response that I’ve read from him poorly communicated but they become a reflection of him in return and trying to nuance your way through outrage isn’t worth the effort.
And I think there’s a reason the author hasn’t shared anything else online since this post. The internet flattened the world and you criticized a guy who owns a search engine. You don’t know who can get a hold of what you say online and when you’re saying things about people calculate the likelihood of them getting a hold of you by the degrees between the guy from 4chan and Jeffrey Epstein divided by half of pi.
I shrugged this remark off at first but I get what you mean now. The relationships that people have with businesses is strange and I don’t mean that in a reductive way. The best way to assure who you’re trading with suitably agrees with your politics and ethics is to probably keep it local. What that constitutes in age of ‘global villages’ is a different discussion altogether.
Back on topic:
I’ve made significant updates to my graph. You’ll notice Kagi, Apple, and Perplexity have all been pushed upward on the Google Axis and are moving further along the AI Dependence Axis.
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All this bad publicity we’re sharing behooves me to move Kagi up near Google. Their relationship with AI as a technology was discounted previously as well so I pushed them forward some.
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Apple’s deal with Google compelled me to advance them on both axises also. Tim Cook’s movie night with Melania also played a role. Take note that they’re getting dangerously close to the Metaverse.
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Perplexity’s been bumped up also for having creepy crawlers.
