I can't think of any other product that makes it to the HN frontpage so consistently. I guess Kagi really hits the bullseye in terms of HN as a target audience.
I never click on ads. Back when I used Google, if I searched for something specific and saw both the ad and the search result I wanted- I just scrolled down to the search result. My wife would just click on the ad, and I think most people do. Beyond that specific example, she clicks on other types of ads as well. For me, I just see them as invasive and hostile. I’m not the type of user Google cares anything about, and maybe that’s why I perceive a drop in quality results.
most normal people have been have been shifting their search habits. tiktok (banned soon), youtube, reddit (though many use google to search reddit since their native search isn't good)
Which, frankly, I'm willing to pay for. I think it's a good product.
docker run -d -p 9017:8080 --name searxng_data -v "${PWD}/searxng_data:/etc/searxng" -e "BASE_URL=http://localhost:9017/" searxng/searxng:2024.8.31-769b2ed03
Its basically no maintenance after this setup. I can mess with all the settings (except results format) from the main interface.
Also as a former Google employee... I dig the idea of contributing funds for some competition in this space.
I think the code is still running, just not publicly. Give me access to that!
I doubt this is true given how the content on the web has changed.
It is fun to be nostalgic though!
Yes, because there’s more stuff and different stuff than there used to be.
What makes you so sure the old algorithm would’ve worked as well with more and different stuff to sift through? Other than the fact that you really want to believe it.
> it’s clear that the algorithm is skewed for political reasons and likely also economic reasons
Bud, it’s a business. This has always been true.
The new $10 all you can eat plan is so much better in that regard. I don't think I would still be using it if they hadn't introduced that.
But the fact you can use kagi to filter out links with ads/trackers inside them,means sometimes great results rise up, and that can be very valuable.
Primarily I've found the source of issues like this are the lack of indexing anymore, and it's not just Kagi. A lot of tech discussions now have their own Forums or Discourse that are poorly promoted and (seem to?) have a robots.txt that says not to index them. I often have to manually go to those sites to run searches and find results from years ago. Also a lot of prohects keep moving away from Forums or equivalent, and using Discord, Matrix, or IRC, none of which end up searchable. No one is going to use those the same way no one is going to call you on the phone, and everyone just has to keep asking the sme questions if they do use it, so I always take that as "we don't support this software/product anymore" and rarely expect to find anything technical about it.
Despite having so little paying users. Not even 35,000 lifetime paying users.
They can really thank the HN echo-chamber, because without it they would have been forgotten a long time ago, nobody knows about Kagi outside of here.
There are plenty of billion dollar companies that make users pay for something that has always been free (note taking apps just off the top of my head).