FWIW They’ve not taken any VC money and are funded by the founder putting his life’s savings into it. That’s part of the attraction, I’m backing the small guy (like Readwise and Obsidian), not the VCs.
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Things don’t seem to be going so well…
I also do that, but it seems to be increasingly pointless. Over the past few days, Kagi got countless answers plain wrong (often for no good reason, because the correct answer was on the very pages it cited). I kept thinking that it was a temporary glitch or my question was just too obscure or whatever, but whenever I copied and pasted the exact same question into Perplexity, it gave me the right answer.
Just to illustrate this, here is the most recent case, where I wanted to know why I’m not seeing any “Sign in with Apple” button on claude.ai:
(LOL, I realize that the question is missing from the kagi screenshot. That’s because I cut and pasted it into Perplexity. (I got into the habit of cutting and pasting because copy and paste keeps failing me so often (no idea why it often doesn’t work, esp. in browsers) and when I do “cut” I can see whether ot ate it or not.)
Here is what Perplexity said:
This is not good. This should not happen. Hope Kagi fixes this before people give up.
No, see, that’s great for Kagi. Did you see my chart? This is totally in line with their alignment/investment—or lack thereof—to the AI race and is additionally a fair representation of Perplexity’s own position.
Here’s what I assume. Sometime this year a company with a lot of resources (in wealth, rank and capability) and incentive (to the brink of it being their duty relative how much the web depends on them) will release a service much like one that already prevents AI crawlers from DDOSing its servers by ostensibly shooing them off with indecorous cartoons before serving the web page you request. Say, if this company were already providing a service similar to that minus the graphic; and say that they were already on the trail of AI companies who unethically crawl websites and have a guy on payroll who’s really good at developing tools that distribute code between servers in a really complex way that will improve upon its predecessors.
The company also has the clout to tell more reliable AI companies to cool it with the crawling so that their product isn’t playing cat-and-mouse with models.
If this service were in fact released sometime between March and June of this year. Or sooner. The developer I’m imagining above, say that he was already accomplished at using LLMs to contribute to the things that he’s already built. But between March and June is my guess.
So what do you think would happen if the service I’m speculating about was really released? And smaller companies who can yield great results before couldn’t because their crawlers got nerfed. Could that happen? And if so, how would that affect the outlook for the rest of their year?
And I’m sure improving agentic search results is possible for Kagi. But their attention may be elsewhere and doing so responsibly may be difficult for a smaller company like them.
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I can’t find the exact quote, but I recall hearing Paul Rotzer, the CEO of SmarterX.ai, saying he doesn’t see how Perplexity survives, he thinks it will be sued by publishers who don’t want to settle because there isn’t enough revenue from them to make it worth their while.
(Studying AI companies is what Paul does for a living.)
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Software and services come and go, I’m content to just the best I can find at any given moment. It’s not like using Perplexity is like choosing a company wide CRM where it takes 3 months to transition from one to another. By its nature it’s purely transactional. I certainly wouldn’t choose a less capable product on the off chance it’s the longest lasting product on the market.
There’s quite a long piece, published last week, on the Kagi blog about Google’s search monopoly and how Kagi needs fair access to the search index that Google has built. Kagi delivered it in response to my query “have Kagi results changed recently?” I have slightly mixed feelings about the content of the blog post: I’m not sure repackaging Google search results makes you an alternative search engine (in fact I am sure it doesn’t) but trying to rebuild Google’s search index from scratch is probably a lost cause simply because Google is so dominant and do we really need more web crawlers?
I’m sticking with Kagi for now, simply because Google feels completely unusable and untrustworthy. Kagi search is far from perfect (as they know) but at least it’s honestly taking my money for a reasonable service that finds me what I need most of the time, instead of ruthlessly trying to exploit my attention and sell it to corporations.
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I check the ethics of the companies I deal with. From the start it’s clear there are none at Perplexity.
Perplexity bypass paywalls, get their crawlers to pretend they’re something else. In addition CEO has made it clear he is ok selling your data. None of that lines up with companies I want to do business with.
I’m slowly changing all of my providers to organizations that deliver value and have some ethics.
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The reason I don’t consider Kagi an option any more is also ethics. I’m not cool with their position of funding going to Russia.
In a messy world we all just have to do our best and make compromises, so I don’t begrudge you or anything else for feeling different to me. But I do consider it a stretch for Kagi to be made out to be paragons.
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Thanks for the information, I didn’t know about that. I will be emailing their CEO to comment on this. I guess, I will have to start searching for a Canadian/EU provider with a decent sense of ethics. This really is important to me and when I find a company that isn’t consistent with my values, I will move on.
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Gosh I hope no one has to rip out hunderds of $/£/€ of Ubiquiti gear tonight Report claims Ubiquiti’s gear serves “a critical communications need of the Russian military, including in drone operations.” | The Verge
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I assume you’re being facetious but I can’t quite tell what your underlying point is. But either way, it’s good to know what’s what as a consumer.
I’ll save you the trouble: Reconsider Yandex integration due to the geopolitical status quo - Kagi Feedback
Some of Vlad’s response:
We set out to fix search, not the world. A truly useful search engine must be impartial - the same way Wikipedia strives for neutrality, or how a library doesn’t curate books based on current political winds. Users deserve access to the best possible information, not information filtered through our political lens.
I have my own politics and maneuver accordingly as well. It’s funny how this ordeal unfolded.
Kagi’s been using Yandex since 2019. Ukraine is invaded Feb. 2022. Yandex announces plans to move some of its IP out of Russia in Nov. of that year. Sometime around then the CEO steps down in and Aug. 2023 publicly denounces the war in Ukraine.
A few months later another war breaks out between Palestine and Israel, the latter country was allegedly approached in early 2022 by the then-CEO of Yandex to migrate 800 employees into the country in a bid to lighten the load of economic sanctions. Apparently that’s where he lives nowadays.
By 2023 all of Yandex winds up in a “consortium” of Russian hands and all I can say to myself in an odd sort of way is phew.
No, my very clear point is that there is a wailing and gnashing of teeth over Kagi / Yandex - but I suspect no one is ripping out Ubiquiti gear because of the links with the Russian military.
everyone is free to make up their own mind and choices, but sometimes I don’t need to know you’re not using a product because you find some of it distasteful.
Lots of Apple Podcasters talk about Ubiquiti. Knowing that the company will sell to the Russian military, means I won’t use them. They were previously on my list of products to buy this year.
This won’t make an impact on the company. However, it’s a matter of principle.
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I am sympathetic with the Kagi position and God knows I am a Ukraine supporter. If people are prompted to leave Kagi because of this issue, they should be sure that they have personally examined the issue in some depth rather than reacting to “something smelly” they saw in passing.
I see Kagi being punished for being a small and remarkably open enterprise.
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This is a complicated issue. We have many competing areas when it comes to matters of ethics - politics, privacy, the environment, etc. And have limited time, money, knowledge and focus to handle them. It’s impossible to navigate a morally perfect path through these shifting sands. Often the perfect choice isn’t on the table.
I don’t have any ubiquiti stuff right now, but in my previous organisation we did. If I were still in charge back there, sure, I wouldn’t go in tomorrow and replace the dozen or so APs that we had. But then, it was a homeless charity, and spending a couple of grand replacing them would mean less spent on helping homeless clients. Would that be a hypocritical decision? Or would spending that money on my personal interests be worse?
The fact that people tend to be more driven by ethics when the decision is easy is normal. The reason it’s defined as easy is because other factors aren’t in competition. Switching search engines may have a little friction in terms of workflow, but probably not much more than that for most. While switching wifi gear right now could be money earmarked for some other purposes - shoes for the kids, paying off debt, the college fund, whatever. So it may not be a comparable decision.
People who care about the environment drive cars. People who care about privacy use Google. The best option people have may not be perfect. This is why I made the point earlier that I don’t begrudge people using Kagi, or indeed Ubiquity for that matter. Because for all I know, it may be completely coherent with their values overall, even if they disagree with the Yandex thing. I think its just more important that people are at least aware, so they can make an informed choice, rather than unwittingly be doing something they’d rather not.
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Your response is gracious, thoughtful, and thought-provoking. It is applicable to many issues well beyond this particular thread. Thank you for such a cogent post. Posts like yours and so many others here are what make this forum such a valuable and pleasant place.
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Yes, thank you! This sentiment in particular feels like an insight for me.
I’m excited to sit with it for a while.
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Please appreciate I overthink everything. Not sending money to Russia is important to me.
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Thanks for the deep and thoughtful response.
Ethical decisions are extremely challenging and sometimes mistakes are made.
We all do our best.
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