Kagi Is Bringing Orion Web Browser to Linux
omgubuntu.co.uk
omgubuntu.co.uk
I'm a bit worried that Kagi might be over-extending here. Instead of focusing and capitalizing on search, they're expanding to the difficult business of browsers. I'm always hesitant when companies try to do everything everywhere all at once, since that might cause a loosening of focus on the original product.
I hope them all the best nonetheless - people actually paying for software is due a comeback!
It’s ironic that it is its own tight collusion, with the difference that you can use Orion just as well with any other search providers as with Kagi.
So yeah, it seems like a departure from search, until you consider that for the features that make Kagi a worthwhile search product (privacy, neutrality, etc), “you can’t get there from here” with the other browsers.
It's proprietary. There's no way of knowing that it's private.
Yes, I'm aware of bytecode analysis, but that's a slow difficult process, and for browsers, the release cycle is short enough that by the time you're done analyzing the current version, a new version is out, and it's significantly harder and less useful to diff a binary, so you end up having to basically start the analysis over for the new version. Unless there's something going on here that I don't know of, that's simply not a viable means of keeping track of browser security.
Malicious software has a long history of detecting monitoring so it can avoid detection. A closed-source browser with backdoors can detect Wireshark, Little Snitch, or whatever you're using to detect outgoing connections, and not connect while those programs are running.
The problem is even more insidious when you're making regular expected connections to a site that the browser creator controls. Many (most?) Orion users are already connecting to Kagi on a regular basis, so they can simply wait until the user logs in to Kagi and smuggle out the data they've collected along with the login request.
In the most extreme case, the browser can not exfiltrate any data at all unless triggered to do so. In this case, the attacker targets specific victims to exfiltrate data from, but avoids exfiltrating from any security researchers or knowledgeable users who might be running software to detect the exfiltration.
In short, the goal here is for those of us with more knowledge to be able to verify the software for every user, because not everyone is capable of monitoring their outgoing traffic effectively, and it's far too easy for backdoored software to simply not phone home when it's being monitored.
With open source software, you can read the source and verify that it doesn't have backdoors. With reproducible builds, you can verify that distributed binaries are the result of building the source code you've verified.
Honestly, if you couldn't figure out that this was going to be my response, you simply don't have the knowledge to be commenting on this topic. I didn't come up with anything I've said here myself, it's pretty basic, widely agreed-upon understanding of why open source is generally more secure. The only people who actually know the topic who "disagree" on this generally have a vested interest in some closed-source software they want to be seen as secure.
Everything seems to just work seamlessly. Searching in private windows works without any configuration or token juggling.
I have never tried the Orion browser or the extension because I don't understand the problem that they allegedly solve.
So now when I search in Safari, the browser says “DuckDuckGo Search” but when I hit return Kagi jumps in. I also had to turn off search suggestions because those (as far as I know) would still come from DDG.
iOS/iPhone has the majority mobile market share in many countries including the United States. If you’re unaware, Google is currently being sued by the US government for establishing a monopoly over search engine placement including payments to Apple and Mozilla to keep Google as the default search engine. So, with that context, can you honestly say there’s no collusion between search providers and browser vendors?
It's an example, but it's not an example that proves the point.
> iOS/iPhone has the majority mobile market share in many countries including the United States. If you’re unaware, Google is currently being sued by the US government for establishing a monopoly over search engine placement including payments to Apple and Mozilla to keep Google as the default search engine. So, with that context, can you honestly say there’s no collusion between search providers and browser vendors?
Yes, easily.
The comment was talking about depth of collusion in making it significantly not seamless. But even with Google pushing a default, it's a trivial switch on Android.
On top of that, Google pushing their search engine onto Android phones has nothing to do with "browser vendors". It's a different topic.
So I say Android is not an example, and desktop is fine, leaving the only example of problems as Apple. Even if I think that's collusion, just Apple doing a thing is not collusion over the general market of browser makers. But I'm also skeptical that it's collusion. Apple always offers limited choices and bad customizability.
If you’re not aware of the “collusion” you might just be asleep at the wheel. You may be right semantically, though: it might not really be collusion—it’s simply light of day bribery.
I didn't say there wasn't collusion of any kind. I said Google being the default on android is not collusion with browser vendors.
And on Windows, Bing is the default.
> And if you visit the internet’s home page on anything other than Chrome you get bombarded with popups compelling you to install Chrome.
Self-promotion is not collusion.
Also critical to my point is that collusion to set a mere default is not what the original comment was talking about. You don't need to switch your browser to "lay bare the depth" of a default. They were talking about something much stronger.
Bing is the only one you really get stuck with, and that only happens outside of the browser. You can change the search engine for searches started inside of Edge.
Bing is also not an example of collusion. It's Microsoft promoting Microsoft.
> I don’t really know what we’re arguing anymore.
Here is what I'm arguing: If you want to say there is a mixture of different types of collusion and monopolistic self-pushing connected to search engines, I agree with you. But the claim earlier was about a very specific type of [deep] collusion, that would make it difficult to change the search engine that a browser uses, that is easy to see when trying to use Kagi. But that difficulty only exists on iOS. It's not true in general. (And I'm not convinced that the specific issue on iOS is a collusion problem rather than an Apple-knows-best problem.)
I think it might have even just sync’d over from my desktop settings? I never even thought about it, it just worked.
And worse, even then it will then only work (at least for me) about 3 times of 4. The other times it will give you the "dummy" site you don't want, and you'll have to reload to get Kagi. Or sometimes it will reload for you after an indeterminate delay, sometimes even after you've already clicked through to a result.
I'm still (mostly) happy with Kagi, but I gave up using their extension for Safari on desktop. I'm having much better luck using a custom redirect in StopTheMadness. I'm not sure what they do differently, but setting Safari to use Ecosia and redirecting with StopTheMadness seems to avoid the problems I was having with Kagi's dedicated extension.
So I honestly still do not understand. It does not make sense for the raison-d'etre for the Orion browser to be "we don't do the irritating thing that Safari does" when most other browsers also don't do that thing. But clearly people want to use the Orion browser. So I guess I'm just (still) missing what the point is.
Absolutely. Safari not offering any way to add Kagi without weird hacks or extensions is absurd.
I get the case for search engines paying browser vendors a cut for being the default, but still getting paid after the user has overridden that selection is already somewhat dubious, and not allowing the user to fully provide their own query URL at all should be illegal.
The closest extant option is something like GNOME Web (also based on WebKit like Orion) but the lack of extension support and poor performance makes it a non-starter.
As someone who already pays for Kagi search, Orion will definitely be on my radar. I'll gladly volunteer $5/mo if I can just copy-paste my extensions unchanged and keep browsing.
Note that if it this were true, Kagi brings features to the table that make it worth the price. For one, it allows you to prioritize/deprioritize sites, and it allows you to block sites from all search results.
"Are there plans for a Windows/Linux/Android version of Orion?
We currently do not have the resources to hire a new team to do any of these platforms yet.
Since Orion is funded by its users only, it is entirely up to the number of subscribers and Orion+ sales we have that will enable funding a new team to make Orion for any new platform. And building a browser is not cheap, especially one on top of WebKit."
Interesting that they concluded Linux was the next most worthwhile one to target but I suppose is probably more popular with users attracted to Kagi/Orion.
They also don’t seem like they’re trying to go big, just stay profitable.
The summarizer lives at a different page, here: https://kagi.com/summarizer/
And each search result item had a menu that includes an option to summarize the page.
Orion is closed source.
We're giving you a full 30-day trial of Kagi Professional because we know you'll
love it. Click "here" to activate your trial, no strings attached.
I'm not affiliated with Kagi, nor am I a paid customer.
Guess not then.
If you try again - it should work just fine. If it does not, you can always contact support@kagi.com and we'll get it fixed asap.
As for the credit-card number, the form should not ask you for a card. It will ask you for your name and address for tax purposes, should you continue the trial afterwards but it will not ask for your card number. We've had some other people mistake this form for a card form as well. (and if it somehow is, then definitely contact support with screenshots because that is not expected)
Thank you for reaching out, sorry I only just now saw it. I just tested it and it indeed work without any problems now and I successfully started my 1 month professional sub. I think what confused me about needing a credit-card was the stripe(? I think) checkout form :D But you are right, it didn't actually want my credit-card number after putting in my address.
Much appreciated the help!
I apologize for getting this wrong, but I hope you can see that it is very hard to parse this any other way than "This is a Kagi Professional subscription, which is free during the first 30 days and will cost you $11.90/month afterwards".
(Unfortunately, I cannot edit my parent post anymore to correct this)
From my understanding (at least with the way we do trials at the moment), it will always say "and then X per month" even if the trial is to cancel at the of the period. I do not believe Stripe (our payment processor) has any options to change this behavior from their built-in checkout page that we use.
The options they do let us control (and options we do set) are if there is no payment method given during the trial - it will cancel it at the end of the trial. If a payment method is given during the trial, then Stripe will it set it to auto-renew by itself (and as far as I know, this is true for if a payment method exists beforehand).
Stripe does not let us control this like it does for no payment method, but we can do a simple workaround on our end to get around this. For what it is worth, there is a warning email is sent out 7 days before if it will renew.
As Vlad (freediver) mentions though, it is definitely not our intention to be misleading or anything like that. I hope that makes sense and clears things up.
It does seem like their long tail of issues is going down - each time I check in, it is clearly improved. So fingers crossed it continues to get better ...
I'm still giving Orion a chance for now... I just installed a slightly older version that works.
[0] https://orionfeedback.org/d/10197-bitwarden-hangs-on-load
I'm in Europe. I'm busy disengaging from US based services.
Any good EU alternatives?
However fwiw, Startpage is nice.
There is a common initiative by ecosia and qwant to build their own index [0], which is hopeful though, and something to look forward to.
Can you explain why? From privacy and free speech perspectives aren’t US services now better?
Kagi now probably has the best search privacy features in the world after recent upgrades with Privacy Pass and even a ToR endpoint.
buy-european-made.eu
We should also mention VAT. The EU’s 21% VAT jacks up prices, a €100 item hitting €121 will slash demand. This provided around €1 trillion revenue for EU governments in 2024. While the US’s typical 7% sales tax keeps a $100 item at $107, hurting demand less, total about $457 billion in 2024. This gap makes US goods pricier in the EU (27.7% markup with tariffs) versus EU goods in the US (10.8% markup), acting like an extra trade wall for American exports, while the EU’s VAT refund on exports gives their firms a edge.
Notice we haven’t even mentioned defense spending yet …
It's just an handful of countries like USA and Malaysia that are the weird ones, and don't implement a VAT tax
They already have a lot of ways to avoid taxes, but at least with VAT they pay the same as everybody else. They are going to buy expensive food or drinks at restaurants and 8% (in my country) of that is going to be taxed. Someone more modest is going to eat at a less expensive place and is going to pay 8% on something less expensive.
I'm aware of the luxury tax but I don't think it's better than the VAT tax.
Do you mean having a higher wealth and estate tax? They both exist where I live, although they tend to hit the poor much more than the rich.
> tax on stock trades
I agree on this one but I think it's not a good idea to penalize people that invest for the long term. Perhaps tax only trades that happened over less than 10 years or something.
I'm sorry, perhaps "poor" wasn't the best word. But let me explain what I was thinking: I live in Switzerland where wealth tax is very much more annoying to the middle-class than the rich. This is because it starts at around CHF80'000--a lot of people qualify--and isn't taxed progressively above CHF2 million. While the rich will pay the highest tier, the middle-class is going to suffer from it much more because they don't invest their wealth. Basically, they are losing wealth, especially after taking inflation into account.
Don't get me wrong, Switzerland is a very good country tax-wise. But your argument against VAT also works very much for other types of taxation.
> By estate tax, I mean an inheritance tax which again, the poor typically don't leave massive inheritances so I'm not seeing how this hits the poor hard
Yes, good point. In Switzerland there are actually only a few cantons that still have the inheritance tax. But I still think that most families would qualify for the estate tax. A middle class family is going to be hurt much more being taxed CHF10k than a rich one taxed CHF100k.
I hope I made myself understandable.
So the only issue I see with the Switzerland tax situation is that the numbers are too low and should be higher. The incentive should be to get people investing in the economy but not to a point of hoarding.
[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/whats-the-so-called-weal...
I am very much in favor of increasing taxes for the very wealthy ($100 million in net worth seems like a good start).
I just don't want that kind of tax to do collateral damage to middle-class people. For example, Switzerland doesn't have capital gains tax (!!!) except if trading is your profession. If we introduce capital gains tax, sure it will tax the rich but they will be able to wave it off while middle-class investors will get hit too. That's why I said in my initial comment that it could be wise to only tax those that invested for less than 10 years. We could also imagine a system where your capital gains are taxed based on your net worth after the trade.
I'm not sure how that would change the incentive for European citizens to rely more on European products in the face of possible future tariffs.
Pretty sure that there is a similar trend in Canada or Mexico, for instance.
In regards to privacy, the country is increasingly trying to pass age verification bills as a way to backdoor more surveillance into law while a billionaire is running around slurping up everyone's private data.
In regards to free speech, the President sues journalist he doesn't agree with, passed an executive order to target lawyers he doesn't like, and is trying to get a law passed that will allow him to further target people who try to hold him accountable.
To say the US is better on both privacy and free speech is either uninformed or delusional.
As for privacy: American privacy laws are even more of a joke than the GDPR. The lack of privacy rights for non-American citizens is the main reason the GDPR bans storing PII in the US.
As for free speech: the kind of free speech American tech companies are offering right now is not something I'm very interested in. America ranking lower than my country in every freedom index I can find also doesn't help.
Furthermore, paying a browser that actively does business with Yandex doesn't sit well with me, even if it won't affect me directly. The comments the CEO made about not caring about "geopolitics" doesn't reassure me much, either.
Qwant and Ecosia, two European search engines, announced on October 24, 2023, a partnership to develop a European search index to lessen their dependence on US tech giants Google and Microsoft. https://insidetelecom.com/qwant-and-ecosia-are-building-an-i...
For the OpenWebSearch.eu initiative, 14 renowned European research and computer centers from 7 countries have joined forces to develop an open European infrastructure for web search https://openwebsearch.eu/
It's worth pointing out that you're going to struggle with this, and it's because (as all software engineers know) Europe has never supported a strong tech/software developer friendly culture. To be clear: I am not saying there are not fantastic devs in Europe (in fact, most of the devs I respect the most are European), but the EU has always struggled to pay competitively and grow its local software community. In fact, all the amazing software engineers I know in Europe.. work for US companies, making US software products (and making US total comp).
Here's a quote of Alan Kay talking about this is in 1997
> [Dijkstra] once wrote a paper—of the kind that he liked to write a lot of—which had the title On the fact that the Atlantic has two sides. It was basically all about how different the approaches to computing science were in Europe, especially in Holland and in the United States. In the US, here, we were not mathematical enough, and gee, in Holland, if you're a full professor, you're actually appointed by the Queen, and there are many other uh important distinctions made between the two cultures. So, uhm, I wrote a rebuttal paper, just called On the fact that most of the software in the world is written on one side of the Atlantic.
The time to address this, unfortunately for Europe, is not today, but 30-40 years ago.
> In fact, all the amazing software engineers I know in Europe.. work for US companies, making US software products (and making US total comp).
What is an amazing software developer if it is not someone who delivers business value? Because there are a lot of software development companies in the Netherlands for instance, or teams part of companies, and they surely deliver business value or they wouldn't exist.
By now I would also bet that of the small subset of developers considering emigrating to the States, sure think they've now dodged a bullet.
I am not sure exactly what are your motivations but if it is privacy and trying to fight some sort of tyranny, I am afraid this might be a bit naive and maybe counterproductive.
The EU is as much influenced by the interests of Big tech than the US. Maybe even more in a way. The regulations and fines you hear about are kayfabe.
It is looking more and more like the net of regulations the EU is rolling out is turning Europe into a digital Gulag.
Right now they only really met a resistance for that ChatControl one [0] but they have been trying for years over and over again, and will probably win at the end.
The irony is if you want and EU alternative you might need to defeat the EU first, who has been preventing the emergence of alternatives for decades now. Or just selfhost as much as possible at home for now.
It’s hosted in Germany and uses the independent Brave search index.
If Kagi is truly cool, by cool I am including opposition to current American policies, and you think they offer a good product, then you shouldn't fret about supporting them. If they aren't cool, then by all means look for alternatives.
uBlock Origin support is at least partial because whenever I click an analytics-redirect link in my email and it opens in Orion, I get a uBlock “tracker blocked” page.
I'm glad that we're seeing more alternatives in the web browser space and Orion being a paid option is believe it or not a selling point for them. I'm interested to see where it ends up.
On the other hand, it promises to be a simple yet usable (builtin adblock + privacy) browser. Ime, brave is probably the closest however it has a lot of nagging around their crypto and ads.
- "We're thrilled to announce that development of the Orion Browser for Linux has officially started!"
- "Register here to receive news and early access opportunities throughout the development year: https://forms.kagi.com/?q=orion_linux_news "
https://bsky.app/profile/kagi.com/post/3ljqsgjmkpk2n
(I interpret that to mean there's a closed beta?)
Text selection jumps all around even on hacker news (I say even because HN is pretty has pretty simple html\css\etc). Any web site with non-english letters and complex layot kills it.
They have Kagi translate, they also mentioned building an email service. I like Kagi search because it works well. I actively avoid their other products because I want to encourage them to stay focused and make a good product.
I thought paid Kagi would be a real search engine. But it's not. And Kagi's browser is closed source so that's a no go too.
I use forums, wikis, and content aggregators (e.g. Reddit) to discover related topics. If a search engine returns too many results, I refine my search terms.
1) Before Google.
2) Google before ‘08.
3) Google after ‘08.
1 and 2 were both pretty good for just exploring.
It’s not “browse search results” but more “curated stumbleupon”.
You can also change your search lens from just generic “web” to “small web”, “forums”, “academic” etc or create your own lenses.
I don’t think these answer your particular browsing pattern, but I for one am happy that it doesn’t return hundreds of results. I feel like that is kind of the point, even. I’d rather get fewer, but better, results and have it just say “look buddy, there isn’t anything else”. Plus, I’m not stopped from just adding `!g` to the query and getting 1000 garbage Google results if I want.
It does completely kill the anonymity though, I agree. It's strange that in this case they're worse than something like duck duck go. Because they don't require payment they simply have less data on you (especially confirmed data). I'm sure kagi protects it but the data you don't even have is even better protected.
I don't need to trust anyone not to share information they don't even have.
They should really allow anonymous payments like mullvad does. There you're just a random number and you can pay with crypto without any addresses.
Provide a random one if this matters to you? It's not like they have any way to check.
There are dozens of Firefox- and Chrome-based browsers, but nothing else. Wonder why?
1. https://blogs.igalia.com/jani/bringing-webkit-back-to-androi...
2. https://github.com/Igalia/wpe-android/releases/tag/v0.1.3
If you have it installed and it appears to be working, it’s probably the default native ad blocker that’s doing the work.
https://orionfeedback.org/d/9145-ublock-origin-not-existent-...
I think failing loudly would be better for users.
Maybe the decision speaks to the distribution of Kagi users across operating systems.
The Windows port is moving from Cairo to Skia soon as well, matching the GTK port (though I think the focus is enabling the CPU renderer to start).
Webkit's CI (EWS) is running the layout tests on Windows, and running more tests on Windows is mostly a matter of funding the hardware.
There's a few things still disabled on the Windows port, some rough edges, and not a lot of production use (Bun and Playwright are the main users). It'd definitely be more work than Linux, but it's not as bad as you'd think.
[1] https://iangrunert.com/2024/10/07/every-jit-tier-enabled-jsc...
But wondering why they would chose Linux before Windows and Android? Wouldn't these markets be much more relevant?
[0]hint hint, since not ALL of us are beholden to the Apple tax.
Why does Orion on iOS not support Bluetooth Web BLE ?? That would really set it apart from Safari...