• TheRealCharlesEames@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Tough to go from free to $10/month without any obvious to me improvements, as much as I’d like to support the cause

    • Linssiili@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      Have you tried it? At least for me, I often get better results compared to google. Also Kagi has a free trial of 100 searches.

      Granted I’m a developer, so my job is basically just searching for information, so getting better results is really valuable for me.

    • ram@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Totally valid. For me the killer feature is being able to change the weights for various sites, making it so websites with content that’s not useful to me or I don’t like don’t appear[1], pinning websites that I consider best-of-class for their relevant searches[2], and prioritizing websites I do like, but aren’t always the best answer[3].

      They also have a “Lenses” feature that lets you make your own search lens (like I have one for Lemmy-only results), but I’ve not really had much use for those.


      1. e.g. apple.com, facebook, nypost, quora ↩︎

      2. e.g. wikipedia, the ffxiv wiki ↩︎

      3. e.g. opencritic, speedrun.com, cbc, w3schools, github ↩︎

      • goji@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        The regex redirect feature is another massive pro. I hope they bring it into Orion as well.

        I already use Stop the Madness for this, and probably will continue to as it’s a more global solution, but having it built right into the search engine at least shows they’re taking real steps to hand control back to the user.

        • ram@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          Oh ya I use that as well, to turn Youtube results into Invidious, reddit into web.archive.org/save/, twitter into nitter, tiktok into proxitok, and AMP results into normal articles. It’s nice because, since I use kagi on my phone, it reaches where extensions don’t normally.

      • shastaxc@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I’m pretty sure there are browser extensions that already do this for you on Google. You can do it manually on each search but that’s obviously cumbersome. But browser extensions are basically what you’re describing and still free

    • narwhal@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      There’s the 5$/month option available if you don’t search more than 300 times a month.

    • ink@r.nf
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      1 year ago

      It’s cheaper to just run SearXNG instance. People claiming any new search engine is better than established ones are hallucinating with their anecdotes.

      • Kayn@dormi.zone
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        1 year ago

        How easy is it for an average Joe to set up their own SearXNG instance?

        • The Doctor@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          It appears a bit more difficult than setting up the original Searx. I’ve been poking around in the code for SearXNG lately because I’m planning on migrating to it but haven’t done any serious work with it yet.

  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    I posted this further down the thread, but I’ll put it here so it’s more visible in case the discussion is interesting.

    According to this source, DuckDuckGo makes ~$0.0027 per search from ad revenue. Kagi @ $5/300 searches is ~$0.01667/search, or >6x higher than DDG’s ad revenue. So is the overall value proposition from Kagi >6x higher than DDG?

    Or to put it another way, for ~$5/month, I can get unlimited VPN through Mullvad, which if I’m not mistaken is quite a bit more resource intensive than search per added customer.

    So $5/month for 300 searches, or $10/month for unlimited is a tough pill to swallow, especially when I have no guarantees that they’re not also selling my data. If they were a nonprofit, I’d trust them a bit more and just chalk the higher cost up to limited scale, but AFAIK they’re private so they have little incentive to reduce prices as they get more popular.

    So I’m skeptical.

    • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I’ve been paying $10 per month for 1000 searches for a few months now and had no plans on cancelling. This unlimited change makes it even better. Not being constantly frustrated by poor search results trying to sell you stuff or influence what you’re looking for is worth the money.

    • goo@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Correct. Same dum dums complaining about the proce are there ones buying $12 lattes/day.

      • PLAVAT🧿S@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        For some, money is tight, and there are already so many subscriptions available for premium service. Many of those are solutions to combat forced enshitification. The Internet is too powerful of a tool to back us into paying for every little feature. So forgive me for being a dum dum and not giving in and enabling these services that aim to nickel and dime.

        • goo@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          No one is saying that you should pay for every little feature.

          This whole thread is about a service which, in my opinion, is worth that $10 (or $5 for the standard plan) when its results are way better than the alternatives and, as the business plan is clear, it doesn’t sell you to third-parties.

          And obviously, I don’t assume that the same people above who suggest self-hosting SearXNG are in remote third world countries, because economically the price is on par with it. (Yeah, yeah, “But muh $5/mo vps can do it!” You manage that and keep up with it and see how you like it just to save those nickels and dimes.)

          Search was never free. And we’re talking about just $10.

    • etrotta@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      the 300/month is for the 5$ plan? possible “fair use”-like hidden limits aside, the 10$ sounds unlimited
      from their front page they claim that “We do not log or associate searches with an account”, and their privacy page is fairly detailed

      • Cyclohexane@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Businesses like this always end up veering towards changing privacy policies to the worse.

        And depending on your threat model, not even a good privacy policy is enough.

        • nephs@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          What do you mean “like these”?

          Usually businesses changing privacy policies are the ones without a revenue model that need to figure it out somehow, and aim to IPO.

          10$/month way more revenue than they could be able to get with ads, and sure, let’s hope they don’t want to IPO, because that’s the root of all enshittification.

    • Kayn@dormi.zone
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      1 year ago

      Are you more content with instead giving your search history to a company whose business model isn’t as transparent?

  • loathsome dongeater@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    300 searches per month for 5 USD sounds a bit expensive. That’s about 10 searches per day. Sometimes I have had to try four or five variations of a search query to find what I am looking for on Google. Having to worry about exhausting a paid search quota sounds a little bit nerve-racking.

  • nyakojiru@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    Pay for search? There should be another approach… at this rate will be paying for every single thing we do on internet and navigating properly would require a bunch of money .

      • Cyclohexane@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        This is how we will likely end up paying for services AND STILL having our data sold. It’s just the nature of capitalism. Businesses have to grow, and in today’s world selling data is always the natural progression towards it.

        A parallel example is streaming services starting out as “tv but no ads and on demand!” or “just pay for the service and you won’t see ads!” but now we are paying and there’s still ads.

      • nyakojiru@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        I understand and I agree. I tried it already and kagi is great. But I’m concerned about the amount of services we will need to pay in order to stay out of the eyes . I’m not sure if it’s the way.

        • Chetzemoka@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          We have to pay for the services we use somehow. I’d rather it be cash than the details of my entire life. But the money to operate those services has to come from somewhere

          • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            That’s fair, but I think they’re charging too much.

            Bitwarden stores my passwords, and they only ask $10/year for their “advanced” plan, and i use them almost as much as search. Mullvad VPN is privacy respecting and costs $5/month for unlimited usage.

            I understand search is more compute intensive than password storage, and more R&D intensive than a VPN, but $10/month is a hard pill to swallow for that service. I could see $10/month for a combined search, VPN, TOTP, and password storage service, but just search doesn’t feel like enough for that cost. Also, I have no guarantees aside from their word that they’re not selling my data. If they were a nonprofit, I might be more interested.

            If this page is accurate, DuckDuckGo makes $0.0027/search, so if we directly converted that to Kagi’s 300 searches/month, it would take 1850 searches for DDG to get the same revenue (Kagi essentially charges $0.0166/search at the $5/month plan). I know they’re not directly comparable because of how they work (I don’t think DDG has its own search model), I just think they’re overcharging, especially since Kagi doesn’t advertise (DDG absolutely does). I wish I could just pay per search. I think $0.01/search is more than fair since it’s ~4x higher than DDG to account for dev efforts, and I’d like to see that go down as usership goes up. That’s a ~33% discount vs the 300 search plan (which I doubt many get full use of), and it’s transparent pricing. They could add prepayment or subscription discounts on top.

              • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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                1 year ago

                Interesting, it looks like they’re only a little over a year old. Maybe in a couple years they’ll be able to drop prices.

                I wish they’d combine their product with a VPN offering. If Mozilla integrated with their own VPN (i.e. VPN settings per container group), I’d already be a customer. But it’s just a co-branded VPN without anything special added on top. If Kagi offered a combined option of VPN + search with VPN integration in their browser, I’d seriously consider it. However, I use Linux and Android for my personal devices, so the only feature I can use from them is their search, and that just isn’t attractive at current prices.

                I’ll certainly check back once they’ve matured a bit, but I’m not going to be an early adopter though. I sincerely hope they stabilize their financials though, since bleeding $100k/month for salaries isn’t ideal.

          • The Doctor@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            Careful! That’s dangerously close to expressing an understanding of nuance on the Internet! /s

      • Helix 🧬@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        Paying a monthly service fee to not have the company sell your data under the guise of “free” sounds quite reasonable.

        How do you know they don’t make you pay and still sell your data to get even more profit? Because no company who said they’re not evil was ever evil?

          • Helix 🧬@feddit.de
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            1 year ago

            This is unnecessarily defeatist.

            Why defeatist? I didn’t say it doesn’t matter. I think that many, if not most, corporations are evil and you shouldn’t trust a single word they say unless you are able to independently verify it.

            how do you know there isn’t a Lemmy instance running right now that’s collecting data with the intent to sell?

            I don’t, but I also don’t put a lot of sellable information on Lemmy, I rather link to my own sites, where some of them have a CC-BY-SA license. I know that everything I put on the internet is basically free game for evil capitalists.

    • Kayn@dormi.zone
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      1 year ago

      You are already paying everywhere with your attention and your time by watching ads, it’s just been normalized to the point of you not realizing it.

      And if you’re using an ad blocker, that’s effectively piracy.

      • PoorPocketsMcNewHold@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Oh, there’s a third way. Like DuckDuckGo & Qwant for example. Just have sponsored ads unrelated to you, or ads related to the specific search only (Without detailing your actual search terms to the one buying the ads) and selected companies in such “store” articles results.

        • hh93@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          I said it’s ads or selling data - it can be any combination of those 3 factors

        • smellythief@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          User choice in the form of multiple tiers would be ideal. I might or might not pay to remove non-creepy ads depending on how they’re presented.

    • mayooooo@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, I want to pay some sort of tax so that I can afford all of this stuff. Patreon this, patreon that, pay email, pay for search, I’m not made out of money

  • willya@lemmyf.uk
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    1 year ago

    Who wants to celebrate by gifting me a year? Good news though as the prices were pretty ridiculous overall. I think I’ll stay on the $5 plan as I seem to be hitting ~170 searches a month ATM.