I really liked their stated mission and product, but since it depends so much on trust, this ethical inconsistency really kills it entirely for me.

I have been active user for over a year prior to initial scandal, but I no longer can trust leaderships judgement, and least I can do is inform people in comments when Kagi inevitably is brought up on HN, that part of their money would go to Yandex.

My country has cut all fuel imports from Russia on May 22, 2022.

And it is weird to compare something you as an individual have very limited control over with directly spending your money with a company. I believe it is important to inform people that part of their spending is going into Russia directly.

It is, but that doesn't alleviate you of personal agency or accountability.

The world might be a bad place, but each of us can make individual decisions, without "whataboutism". I certainly try to do so.

The thing with Yandex is that it's required by Russian law to not include websites which are blocked in Russia (and that's many thousands of websites: https://github.com/zapret-info/z-i). But it's not clear what does it mean for international users - I doubt it outright doesn't include bbc.com or facebook.com for them, but what if it pessimizes those websites somehow? How would anyone detect that?

This user has a "staff" badge and is credited a lot in changelogs.

https://s3.gtw.lt/v42aeA8QI0WiBtX9z25HMKqf.png

If the company truly had best search results in mind, they would allow an opt-out for the questionable indexes, instead they doubled down and lost all respect and more importantly trust in my eyes.