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Kagi. Search that actually works, with no ads. Worth every penny.
Another happy Kagi user here, and I also hate sounding like a shill but I’m really so glad I use their product. Not having to parse through ads and AI slop when I’m busy and looking for info is so helpful when I’m trying to work.
how is it better than ddg? genuinely asking
I like ecosia
They have ads but.. they donate their profits to help the coimate
They even have a breakdown of their economy on their site
DDG still does top ranking of advertisers even though they aren't directly targeted to you. Kagi puts the most relevant information to your search regardless to what it is you search. You're also able to uprank and downrank different sites you want to see more or less of in your searches. For example if you're someone who looks up a lot of medical terms for work or something you can completely block sites like WebMD from taking over the results making it harder to find more relevant information to it. Not my exact use case but have been a Kagi user for probably 8 months now and it's 100% worth it for the rankings as well as Kagi Translate since it has a proofread feature that replaces Grammarly for me as a dyslexic that has to write a lot of emails.
thanks very much for this info. i can see the appeal of personal ranking. appreciate the details.
I don’t know, I never personally used DDG much pardon (I should have, can’t recall why I didn’t).
Why do I always see so many down votes when Kagi is mentioned?
I think it might be one or both of:
In both cases, meh. I’m answering the OP question with my opinion, and hopefully somebody finds it useful.
Some people don't like the Dev also.
Thanks so much! I wouldn't have known about it had people not talked about it. It's only been a much or two since switching to kagi and I've been happy with it.
Also that Kagi is working alongside AI instead of resisting it. I'm not thrilled about that part either, but it's not a complete deal breaker for me since I can just choose not to use it.
IMO, LLMs are a tool which are sometimes useful; I like appending a question mark to a query to get a quick answer. But I agree that the AI work should be kept to a minimum. At least they are using models which are far more sustainable and lightweight.
I didn't downvote, but probably because they're a young USA-based search engine that requires login to use - which is usually a huge red flag for privacy, and their privacy of user searches is claimed but has never been verified by any kind of audit - another significant red flag.
Why trust another for-profit Palo-Alto search company with your search data, assist their (potential) tracking by logging in, and pay for it in the process?
Wouldn't using their Privacy Pass solve this?
So, wait.. pay for search, which we need you logged in for and 'we swear is private bro, honest - but oh hey, if you want a search that's definitely actually private and we promise it (harder)', pay them more for a Professional/Ultimate/Team plan to unlock Privacy Pass access .. that is uhh, a fresh red flag.
Further, you can't access Privacy Pass (PP) searches via their standard search engine page.. you can only access it by installing and using their closed source browser, or their closed source Android app, or their closed source browser extension.. So again its just 'trust me bro' but you're paying them more, and each of the technologies they require you use to access the Privacy Pass can theoretically track all of your data in far more detail than a search engine alone? Mate, from my perspective it's privacy red flags all the way down.
I mean I get it, how do you have a premium search engine that your users pay for to avoid ads, while also identifying that they've paid, while guaranteeing their anonymity/privacy? That's a tricky thing to solve, but the way they've opted to solve is arguably even more suspicious. Open source client code (at least) to validate the server service could not be using the PP tokens to link to a specific user would be a right way.
Kagi is definitely worth it.
I'll be a lifer for Kagi. I still twitch my way to Google sometimes from a lifetime of habit and every time, it's like a little check-in, and I think, "oh, god, it can't have gotten this much worse since last time, can it?"