Yup. I've been using Kagi for a couple years now and haven't looked back. If I'm on someone else's computer where I don't have my Kagi login, DuckDuckGo is usually sufficient.
Paying for search isn't for everyone, of course, but I like being the customer and not the product, and I think the quality of the experience flows from that.
These comments come up every time someone mentions Kagi on HN, yet the commentator apparently never boycotts Google because it pays for the American or Israeli war effort. Why is Ukraine the only war that matters?
Because some people care a lot more about Ukraine than about a side with pretty unsavory combatants and a radicalized population that supports said unsavory combatants?
Oh this is an easy one, because I care about Ukraine more than I care about a million other conflicts that may be happening in the world at the moment.
I think you’ll find that this is the case for everyone - people care about their 2 or 3 pet things and pay little attention to the distractions.
Understandable but not everyone in Russia is for that war, even if they have to pay taxes.
It's terribly unfortunate ... but such that it is, I know if I absolutely need results when other alternative search engines are doing little better than Google ... ie not at all, then last try it's Yandex, which has seen more issues creep in the last few years using switch operators, than I recall back in 2015; but any amount of helpful results is better than zero, as well as not wasting hours of my time. But at times sometimes Yandex also strikes out oddly, almost like there's an unseen cabal that have decreed some more or less benign content off limits.
You don't have to be for war to be instrumental in it. But Yandex isn't even just a Russian taxpayer which would be bad enough. It's been apprehended by the government and turned into a key element of its propaganda machine. It's literally one of the things that keeps Russia what it is. And using results from it? That's just insane. They are poisoned, and we actually know about it in detail thanks to a source code leak. If I wanted to see what the Russian propaganda is pushing today I can go to Yandex directly. But including it in my search results automatically?
While I agree with everything you write, Google results are equally poisoned. Yandex provides results which the US government censors. The only way we can currently get a full picture of the internet is using search engines oppositionally. Kagi does this using an amalgamation, and unfortunately that means using Yandex and other sources.
I would love to live in a world where governments were not censoring content.
Could you share with us some examples of search results provided by Yandex which the US government censors? What specific domains or sites does Yandex index and provide results on?
It was also very good during the pandemic. Google results at the time were extremely biased towards Western government narratives. Some mainstream articles which took a skeptical view on lockdowns and the virus orgin seemingly would not show regardless of how you tried to search them on Google.
Yandax on the other hand tended to be more neutral.
DBA most likely means “don’t believe anything” or “don’t believe anybody”
Just checking Yandex - it did give a better result for "flat earth" as a search with lots of great YouTube videos near the top. Wikipedia came in at the 10th result in the list so that was good too.
I'm sure Yandex welcomes malcontented revolutionary thinkers. To quote Yandex:
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me
And yet, I somehow seem to be aware that 1337x.to exists without ever having used Yandex to find it...
I have no doubt that Russia is a free for all of finding pirated stuff online, since what US copyright holder is going to bother to even attempt to sue people in russia for something like hosting a website with direct download epub files of popular books?
Of course. [Google provides a dashboard for exactly this.](https://transparencyreport.google.com/government-removals/go...) 275,597 named items for removal since 2011. You can download the report yourself. Content ordered for removal cover topics such as health all the way to copyright.
One major battle ground has been sci-hub. This is best described as a collective whose stated goal is to make science free for everyone rather than having it stuck behind a journal paywall. The entire journal industry is one giant scam, but I digress. U.S. laws have repeatedly been passed and tested, and Google has been repeatedly ordered to remove domains such as sci-hub.tw and sci-hub.cc, among many more.
This is far more expansive than scientific papers, of course, and extends to countless copyright adjacent websites. Sites which have been repeatedly targeted include YTS, FMovies, and AniWave (and their associated domains).
I should also expand my previous comment. Google doesn't just censor results which the U.S. government has requested. It very frequently censors results of its own volition. Whether for ideological or fiscal reasons. One litmus test I often use is to search for the Proud Boys. Their website(s) have long been censored for a variety of reasons, including "disinformation" and public safety. I can find their website on Kagi. I cannot find it on Google.
Whether by the government, or for ideological or fiscal reasons, when I search for information I expect to be given that information. Google is an unreliable source. They all are.
> One litmus test I often use is to search for the Proud Boys. Their website(s) have long been censored for a variety of reasons, including "disinformation" and public safety. I can find their website on Kagi. I cannot find it on Google.
Do you apply this same litmus test to far-left things which Google might have also removed, or do you consider the lack of Google listing the Proud Boys to be some sort of special and unique infringement on freedom of speech? I'm always quite suspicious when somebody cites something that is barely more rational than the ideology of Timothy McVeigh as something that deserves to be read by a wider audience. Do you also complain that your local Barnes and Noble doesn't stock a copy of the Turner Diaries?
> Do you apply this same litmus test to far-left things which Google might have also removed, or do you consider the lack of Google listing the Proud Boys to be some sort of special and unique infringement on freedom of speech?
I consider all censorship wrong. The reason I use the Proud Boys is because it was a well publicised incident and has been a reliable indicator of censorship since then. If you have left wing domains I could include in my litmus test I would be grateful. I'm sure that Yandex censors some of them, which is why I say above: the best way to circumvent censorship is oppositional use.
> I'm always quite suspicious when somebody cites something that is barely more rational than the ideology of Timothy McVeigh as something that deserves to be read by a wider audience. Do you also complain that your local Barnes and Noble doesn't stock a copy of the Turner Diaries?
What a remarkably fast progression from, "what is being censored?" to "here's why it's a good thing." I didn't claim Google has a responsibility to provide uncensored results. I and others are explaining that Google doesn't provide reliably uncensored results, and that that is why providers like Yandex are required to access an uncensored internet.
> Yandex are required to access an uncensored internet.
And if you can read Russian I'm sure you'd find that Yandex is suspiciously missing information about strongly anti-Putin Russians such as the recent writings of Garry Kasparov. Don't pretend it is some bastion of free speech. I still think it's extremely suspicious and very revealing that you immediately jumped to The Proud Boys as your first and best prototypical example of something that's being censored by Google.
> And if you can read Russian I'm sure you'd find that Yandex is suspiciously missing information about strongly anti-Putin Russians such as the recent writings of Garry Kasparov. Don't pretend it is some bastion of free speech.
And if you would do me the courtesy of reading my comments you would see that I am not claiming Yandex to be censorship-free. The exact opposite.
> I still think it's extremely suspicious and very revealing that you immediately jumped to The Proud Boys as your first and best prototypical example of something that's being censored by Google.
You must be easily alarmed. I find it revealing that you haven't provided any censored left wing content which I can add to my test. Instead of engaging with what I am writing, you repeat empty aphorisms and written tics which should best be contained to echo-chambers like Reddit and Bluesky.
Either way it seems you've given up any pretense of caring about the subject of censorship as it applies to search engines.
I detest the Proud Boys for a wide variety of reasons and I really wish that they would just go away.
But if they exist on the web, then I want to have the unfettered liberty to find them on that web and see what they've got to say without having it digested, ruminated and filtered before eventually being regurgitated through someone else's mouthpiece.
You're right, but a fair accounting would probably find that Google is even worse. US misinformation and deception is paralleled only by the Mossad/IDF, who also has Google contracts.
It's entirely worth boycotting all of these companies, if only to protect yourself from their manipulation.
I don't really rely on search engines including Yandex to feed me stories which could be political propaganda - I can readily rely on various news sites to do that. I also just want the results which are links to other sites which may or may not be politically biased.
I'm usually looking for information - generally as an aide to help recall old movies and songs etc, for device info, filling in broad blanks on new consumer everyday stuff I've not encountered that much or looking for precise troubleshooting diagnostic help often found in forums. Lately the main stay search engines are loathed to provide decent diagnostic queries with quality results from forum based help areas - most of the time I know stack exchange results should be higher in number or exist, as well there being a shortage of variety of other forums in the results. It's generally why for the harder queries I end back at Yandex.
Did you see the episode of “The Good Place” where the crew finally convinced God that it was impossible to for humans to reach The Good Place because of the web of interconnected evil that lowkey permeates everything humans do?
I mean, you can’t buy a bottle of water without trampling the rights of indigenous peoples to their water.
To boot, every last Great Power nation is at war all the time. Doesn’t matter if you buy a can of Coke or a Chinese EV, or hell a handmade bespoke bicycle from Europe. You’re funding a war effort somewhere.
So what’s the point exactly? Unless you’re a disingenuous actor trying hard to steer people away from Kagi?
Understandable. Personally, I'm also against that war.
Do you perhaps are also against the Israeli-Palestinian war?
Can you also CATEGORICALLY REFUSE to use any service, government or agency that aids either the acts of genocide from Israel or fuel the terrorist attacks from Hamas?
Wow, pretty cool, much better than being a Clinton fan during the destruction of Yugoslavia.
Thank you for sharing this information, you have now motivated me to purchase Kagi!
I tried Kagi for 2 months and I found myself still reaching for google when it didn't have the results I wanted.
further, a bunch of little stuff was broken here and there (a login screen taking me to search instead of assistant etc.)
I felt the $5 tier was too restrictive and I didn't want to pay even more for something I perceived as not really being good enough.
if I'm paying for a search engine I'd expect it to be a little premium, but it felt like a worse google you'd only use for ideological reasons.
I had the exact opposite experience. Felt very polished and the search results are top notch. For the record, I don’t use any of their blocks. But I do appreciate the lack of AI generated BS in the results!
Paying for search isn't for everyone, of course, but I like being the customer and not the product, and I think the quality of the experience flows from that.