I'm really upset and just baffled about this trend that this is going on the web especially for search engines.
And Kagi isn't open source either.
Is there an alternative im unaware of?
It should just let me search, when I want to pay then I pay.
I would like Kagi to do something like Mullvad does without knowing who I am so I don't need to fiddle around with emails or passwords.
If they do not get your email they have a lower chance of turning you into a paying user, which is the sole purpose of the offer.
Even taking into account that some potential customers, like you, will be pissed and never sign up to even the free plan, I am pretty sure the metrics support their decision to keep asking for the email.
I pay for Mullvad, and would pay for Kagi but only if I can not have my identity attached to their service and not have any emails associated with them.
Mullvad is doing it right.
A free plan just cannot work if anyone can mint new identities for free.
You paying for Mullvad doesn't seem very relevant to that complaint. They have no free plan. They also require creating an account and signing in to use their service at all.
There is nothing stopping Kagi from having a business model like what Mullvad does.
Mullvad doesn't require emails, passwords or the like to operate and yet it is very privacy friendly.
> Anonymous account
> We don’t ask for any personal info – not even your email...
Regardless, there’s nothing to stop Mullvad, Brave, Kagi, or any other company from logging and doing attribution. Trust is part of the equation.
I'd like to mention that when you subscribe to Brave Search premium, it is completely decoupled from the searches you then make (no way for us to link your email to your searches) by relying on blinded tokens to prove that you are premium, but without the backend knowing which account (and using one new token per search in order to avoid being able to build search sessions).
I hope that helps,