alt Hacker NewsKagi is unfortunately in a tough spot, imo.
I'm a happy subscriber, and it's certainly a big improvement over Google search. But the internet just isn't the same place it was five years ago. And as search results (for non-navigational queries) are becoming less useful by the day, I find myself asking AI to do it for me more.
There's a lot to like about Kagi, but they'll probably have to reinvent themselves if they want to grow beyond the niche that high level internet search will probably become.
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Agreed. I LOVE Kagi as a search engine - so long as it answers queries in under 2s with no ads, I'm a very happy customer. I don't mind if they flirt with LLMs, but if the LLM work detracts from the search work they will lose me as a paying customer. If the LLM work slows down search results I also lose the only thing I pay for - search result response time and correctness.
I didn't renew my Kagi subscription, as I am now mostly using AI based search (google, chat.bing.com, perplexity). Search engine wise, Kagi was superior but it is just that traditional search engines are less and less needed with the rise of AI.
BUT Kagi is in a good spot, as they have their user data (and the feedback/upvote/downvote/blacklist feature) to train their own models on. Maybe their AI will one day be a superior search. Especially when the big ones like Google will start to enshittify the free AI tier with ads, or SEO-like AI manipulation on Google will take off.
"Asking AI" is doing a lot of work there.
The people who pay for Kagi do so for very specific reasons, often because they know what "asking AI" really means for their privacy.
Why though. Why does it need to grow beyond a niche premium option? As long as they’re paying the bills and everyone is happy why not just let a good thing keep chugging along.