About a year ago, I tried the free 300 search trial. I liked it, but wasn't ready to commit to the expense.

This year, they offered me a free 30 day unlimited trial, so I'm about 10 days into that. I've only used 128 searches so far.

What I seem to find is that I use it, get to what I'm looking for, and move on. So it's not really on my mind. But it's subtly refreshing to spend less time fighting search to get what I want.

But I have not objectively done comparisons to try to figure out if it's better or not. It does just seem to work for search, and I use it and move on.

I don't like the 300 search limit, because it scratches my brain - "do I need to search for this? can I find it some other way? should I just use duckduckgo for this search?" But I also don't want to spend $120/year, because I'm largely allergic to subscriptions. Still, if I can spend $360/year on Disney/Hulu/Max, I should be able to upgrade my search experience.

I finished my 30 day trial the other week, and went back to DDG. After a few days, I realized I didn't miss anything, so I'll happily stay with DDG. Perhaps I'm not a very discerning searcher. Most of my searches are bang-searches of Wikipedia or CPP or Python anyway.

Still, I'd be fine with supporting a sustainable search engine. $10/more is a bit too steep for my liking, though, measured against the utility I get from it.

As my income drops in slow periods, I pause subscriptions to many things. The very last two I would be willing to give up are (n-1): YouTube Premium and (n): Kagi.

Switched to nebula when they removed YouTube lite and the price was double. Got no ads on my devices anyway.

For me, YouTube Premium (for family) is so worth it because:

- It removes ads for my kids, which are going to watch YouTube no matter what I do

- It includes YouTube Music, so I don't need a separate Spotify subscription

- It sends money to creators based on what I proportionally spend time watching, rather than based on how valuable of an audience I'm deemed to be when an ad slot is auctioned

- It is a signal that I'm willing to pay for content, and I want platforms and creators to continue offering that option

Rather send money directly to creators rather than filtering it through Google.

People just don't do that. If they did, the state of things wouldn't be the way it is. It's also kinda unfair to creators whose content people consume but just don't pay for in any way, because of a variety of possible reasons (they just don't even think about it, or they don't deem them "worthy" of being paid, or it's about having to go out of their way to pay someone, and then people only paying a limited amount of "chosen" people, etc.)

Firefox (and probably others) allows you to set up custom search engines (like Wikipedia). So when I know I am trying to get to Wikipedia or npm or whatever I just do an @wikipedia and type my search.

I’ve used keyword search for many years, maybe since Netscape. Set it up and type “w thing”, no quotes. Can be a lot shorter.

Yep, I prefer the Firefox keywords for various sites, and to disable search support entirely.

For those who haven't tried this yet: the bookmark for Wikipedia might look something like this:

    Name:    [SEARCH] WIKIPEDIA
    URL:     https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=%s
    Keyword: w

Then, when you want to do a Wikipedia search, go to the URL&search bar, and enter `w` as the first word, followed by the search term, such as `w cats`.

Also, you might want to disable the other search engine and portal page features as much as you can. This requires setting some preferences not on the Preferences pages, so going to `about:config` preferences, to set, e.g., `keyword.enabled` to false.

Note that you control the keywords. So I thought Wikipedia deserved a one-letter keyword. But `a` went to archive.org Wayback Machine (which also meant I could just prefix any URL with `a` and a space), while I made myself spell out `amazon` every time I was in danger of unnecessary consumerism.

Also, there’s a shortcut to make the entry. Right click on the search input of the desired page and select make keyword search.

Pro tip : there is a DuckDuckGo lite version

Feel the same. I liked it during the trial, but not THAT much.

10 dollars is like, a sandwich. Access to your search engine for a month is less useful than a sandwich?

The thing is, subscriptions do add up. Lots of folks are carrying a bunch of $10 a month subscriptions that individually are no big but when added up start tacking on $100-$200 a month to their bills.

I'm a big proponent of paying for things instead of using ad-supported things, so I don't mind paying for Kagi -- but I also have subscriptions and other monthly payments that make me think hard before signing up for a new one. $10 a month for Kagi, $10 for a webcomic Patreon, $5 for a musician's Patreon, $10 a month to support Mastodon.social, $10 a month to Internet Archive, and an assortment of other monthly (or yearly) subs/payments... plus streaming, plus ... it adds up.

Ideally if more people were supporting these things the monthly charges could be less -- e.g., if Kagi had more users their monthly could be $5 instead -- but pricing and getting people to pony up is hard.

I think it’s important to divide your subscriptions into different categories to make wise choices. My categories are utility, tools, entertainment, education, and 501c.

I have no problem paying for tools if the value is there, so I minimize my spending in other categories. Every quarter I review subscriptions, switch some from monthly to yearly to save money, cancel some, adjust levels on others.

If your point is that buying many things can add up to be expensive...yes? At what price point would you stop saying that is true? If it's 2 dollars someone would be listing all the things they buy for 2 dollars that add up to get expensive. Let's leave out the price of all our only fans subscriptions and consider the thing we're talking about

For a myriad of reasons I'm cutting back on American subscriptions (am European). Kagi has a soft spot near my heart, so it is likely one of those going out last.

If sandwiches are $10 for you and not worth much, might I ask you to support my subscription instead? Because when I make a sandwich myself, the costs are approx 0,50 EUR, and that is the type of food I can afford.

It is the same with this 'it is only a cup of coffee' or 'only a beer'. I don't drink beer, I do drink coffee, but when I did drink beer the special beers were lower than the prices of the ones you pay in pubs. As for coffee, it just shows you're from San Francisco or something, cause we got free coffee at work in our culture here.

Moreover, there's enough people in this world for whom $10 a month is a huge deal, and all your comment shows is that you're either unaware of such or simply don't care.

Kagi isn't competing against no access to a search engine, it's competing against Google, DDG, etc etc which are free (or more specifically, you could say ads are the cost).

Kagi needs to not just be worth $10, but also worth ($10 - ads) more than the alternatives.

It is EASILY worth that. It’s a tool that I use constantly every day for work and at home. I literally never fall back to using Google anymore. Google results turned to doggie doo years ago and getting what I need at the top of the list again is worth every penny. Kagi is like Google from 10 years ago if they had kept optimizing it for quality instead of enshitifying it to increase revenue.

I'm glad it provided you with that much value! When I gave Kagi a try, the results weren't as impactful for me, so paying for the service didn't make sense. Things have different values to different people, and that's okay.

I got a family subscription after saving on hotel bookings after using google, which impressed my wife. I like it for my children because not only does it return age appropriate results, there is no advertising targeting children. It works out $20/month for 6 people, a Christmas present for my sisters, mother and nephew that keeps giving.

Agreed. I've been a subscriber for over two years. At first the depth of search results was not as good as Google's but I used Kagi nonetheless because of the no-ad policy. Today, the results are just as good as Google's and still no ad, making Kagi a no-brainer in my eyes.

It always seems like there's no one less willing to pay for software than those who create it for a living

Pretty sure Kagi’s users are disproportionately software workers by a large margin, though.

It's a sandwich _subscription_. If you keep thinking like that, it's death by a thousand cuts.

I think that's sort of the nature of sandwiches. You have to keep paying for them if you want to keep eating them.

The nature of subscriptions is that you keep paying for them forever whether you're eating them or not. Maybe you forgot about your sandwiches and they're just piling up on your doorstep.

Kagi implemented automatic pausing on your subscription if you don't use it, so it's actually not the same here.

I think Kagi being nice is not a valid argument for accepting lots of low-cost subscriptions in your life.

Sure, but Kagi is one of the ones you'll get the value back out of. And if you don't use it you don't pay.

I only subscribe to Spotify, YouTube and Kagi as "online services". Video media I happily sail the seas for and I don't mind evil megacorps "losing" money on my behalf.

Ok, well I guess it's a good thing we're talking about kagi and not all your subscriptions, then.

$10 is many sandwiches.

It’s also less than a single sandwich. Not sure how “it depends on the sandwich” adds to the conversation. The point still remains.

The cost of a sandwich ranges beyond $0.50 to $200.00. It depends on the sandwich adds about as much to the conversation as "it costs less than a sandwich".

And to be clear by "beyond" I mean some sandwiches cost less than $0.50, and some sandwiches cost more than $200.00

The point they were making is: look, it's so cheap it's the cost of one sandwich.

Does that point still stand if it's not the cost of one sandwich, unless you're paying a fortune for a sandwich?

If a diff shop has a sandwich that is 90% as good and is free but has ads plastered all over the walls, I will probably take the free sandwich.

Did you miss the part about them using DDG? They do have access to their search engine.

If the choice were between no search engine or paid search engine, then your point is a good one, but that's not the choice here.

I'm a very happy Kagi subscriber btw. I think it's worth the money. I love the personal uprank/downrank feature and Quick Answers personally and get a lot of value from them. But if I didn't use those it might not be worth it to me either.

"It's one banana, Michael. What could it cost, $10?"

> 10 dollars is like, a sandwich

In Silicon Valley?

Does Kagi only want to sell to techbros?

$10 is a reasonable price for a sandwich in any decent sandwich shop in the US.

I live in Mississippi, crappiest economy in the nation. I assume people are thinking they meant the cost of a homemade bologna sandwich or something, otherwise this conversation is pretty absurd.

I'm in the capital city of Germany, a sandwich in the bakery around the corner is about 3-4 euros.

Food is currently very, very expensive in the US.

Went to Europe a few years ago and I remembered previously that food prices in Europe were high. But this last time, I noticed they were consistently ~5 euro/dollars less than it would be in the US. I was pleasantly surprised.

It’s only gotten worse here. Typical restaurant entree is maybe 17 dollars. Fast food is now about 12 dollars for a meal. At least in DFW Texas.

Wish I could say I was surprised. I bet the bread is better too.

Depends. Not always.

But there is this one shop selling shawarma sandwich made to fresh bread that costs 3.90€. And that is already a good lunch.

A döner sandwich can cost 2.90€ the cheapest.

Bakeries have baguettes with cheese and ham for 4-5 euros.

If you go to Mitte, a döner can already be 6-9 euros. And that is expensive.

^ In America, you have to remember that we overpay for crappier food.

I suspect the US definition of sandwich is different to the European one, but genuinely not sure. Curious — can someone give me a few examples describing the $10 sandwiches you get in the US? Are we talking warm, ordered off a menu, good quality meat, filling enough to serve as a meal?

This whole conversation has reminded me of the $5 milkshake conversation in Pulp Fiction.

I’ve signed up for the Kagi trial, so far I’m liking it. Breath of fresh air compared to the free ones. Best result, first position.

Nice troll. A footlong Ultimate BMT is $11.29 in Wichita before taxes (I just checked).

Kagi builds an excellent product for a very fair price. Direct your ire elsewhere.

A footlong is rather big for an average sandwich. Half of that is easily a large sandwich by themselves. So the cost for two large sandwiches.

Eating a sandwich over two sittings is easier than using 1 month subscription over two months, at least in my country.

No, but they also don't wanna sell to the entire planet. There's definitely a market for a 10$ search engine, since it doesn't make money by maximizing eyeballs it doesn't have to cater to the planet.

Not everyone has a cooled mattress, AC, car etc.. "Are all those things only for techbros"?

How much can a bana- er, sandwich cost?

I just checked McDonalds in my hometown in Idaho. A Big Mac is $5.99 for just the sandwich and $10.68 for a meal. A Double Quarter Pounder is $8.29 for just a sandwich.

McDonalds is definitely on the cheap side so $10.00 seems like a reasonable estimate of “sandwich money”.

No need to invoke tech bros or silicon valley. Certainly no need to invent a motive.

YMMV, but because search is my gateway to the web, I think of my Kagi subscription less like a charge for an optional service (like Netflix / Hulu), and more like paying an ISP to be my access to the web.

Watch out - I got the email offering a new 30 day free trial, and at the end of the month they did nothing to inform me and started charging the credit card they apparently still had on file from when I subscribed for a month or two a few years ago.

I guess with other companies I would’ve expected something like that and monitored the time more closely, but with Kagi I expected better - especially since the email offering the new free trial promised “A month on us”, and said “Click here to activate your trial, no strings attached”.

Hey, Engineer from Kagi here.

This is not something we intentionally do here, and is a feature of Stripe to automatically renew at the end of a trial if there is a payment method present. It should have also sent you an email about 7 days before it was going to renew.

With that said, I do understand how this may be unexpected. I will look into adding a workaround for this auto-renewal so that we can prevent that in the future for other users. Either way, if you contact support@kagi.com we can give you a full refund.

That comment from an actual human being, sir, more than anything else, would be by itself a reason for me to switch to Kagi everywhere.

Fortunately I already switched to Kagi everywhere...

Egg on face from Hackernews has been known to turn the eye of even Google.

There is tremendous power here.

Have you ever written software? Especially to manage payments? This is a very plausible bug around a corner case. Maybe they're secretly twirling their evil mustaches figuring out how to scam their previous customers that they're also trying to win back, or maybe sometimes bugs happen.

As far as I remember, this ‘try us again for 30 days’ promotion was explicitly for previous subscribers, so I would not say this was a corner case.

Ah, if that's true that does make this a little less excusable. I still don't think it's nefarious, but I do think it's a pretty bad and embarrasing bug on Kagi's part.

Having bugs is okay.

That particular reply however is gross and controversial on so many levels.

If you have a bug at a partner, you don't claim that it is intended and "I do understand how this may be unexpected". If it affects multiple users, you don't do opt-in refunds (which is again, illegal, and is a scam if intentional).

> Maybe they're secretly twirling their evil mustaches figuring out how to scam their previous customers

They've just admitted it?

Mate. This guy is a software engineer and taking time out of his day to help a client on a forum and explaining why this might happen.. And is also taking the user input back to his employer to hopefully find a way to improve the user experience.

It's also not a scam. If you sign up for a trial that tells you you'll be charged at the end and don't bother to notify yourself.. That's 100% legal, 100% expected and 100% on you. You can argue that it's not a great customer experience.. But again, the engineer understands that.

> Mate. This guy is a software engineer and taking time out of his day to help a client on a forum and explaining why this might happen..

Yep. That explains why is it gross, controversial, and admits a scam. Which is okay, I guess. I've read much worse. (For example, in this very thread. From the person I'm just answering.)

I was just surprised that someone reading it felt that he needs to give money Kagi immediately. We are different.

> It's also not a scam. If you sign up for a trial that tells you you'll be charged at the end and don't bother to notify yourself.. That's 100% legal, 100% expected and 100% on you.

First, no, it's not legal. Especially with

    but with Kagi I expected better - especially since the email offering the new free trial promised “A month on us”, and said “Click here to activate your trial, no strings attached”.

Second, they at Kagi didn't want this (according to what they said). It just happened (again, according to what they said). No refunds tho (again, according to what they said).

I clearly skimmed the thread too much. The quote from your e-mail is definitely misleading.

I do not like to see a helpful engineer being given a hard time.. But that is a worse look for Kagi than I was aware of.

> will look into adding a workaround for this auto-renewal so that we can prevent that in the future for other users

What more do you want? A user complained, they offered a refund and they said they would look into fixing it.

so should they refund everyone who had free trial and started paying afterwards? what if they wanted to start paying?

And what if they simply missed that it continued charging with the stripe email? It’s a dark pattern that they should fix.

They are fixing it. The only debate in this thread is whether they should automatically refund everybody who might have been affected, regardless whether that person intended to continue or not. That's a pretty different thing.

I don't see how this is a debate. People unsubscreibed Kagi, they never subscribed again, billing them is illegal, period. (And even if it were legal, why would anyone want to that in the first place? If I operated a business I most certainly wouldn't want to bill people that are not my users.)

"wHaT iF tHeY wAnTeD tO sTaRt pAyInG?" was just a joke on twisted cartoon scammer logic, not an argument.

Anyone that wants to use Kagi again can click on the subscribe button.

No that’s not it. The contention was around two things 1) the dark pattern and 2) should they refund everyone.

I get it, people love Kagi, I do too. But this is a bad pattern that they should never have allowed on the first occurrence.

Yes they said they are looking into fixing it but it was a soft commitment and they also should think about refunding folks.

> don't claim that it is intended and "I do understand how this may be unexpected".

This is why companies end up having PR people. An attempt to sound understanding can can easily be scuttled by an unfortunate choice of words. If the programmer had shortened that sentence to "I do understand.", there would not have been a chance to construe an attempt at downplaying the situation.

Dude what's your angle here. Scammers don't offer full refunds.

> and they offer opt-in (not automatic) refund.

Please consider whether they can authenticate a user based on an HN comment and HN profile. The request for the user contact the company directly makes sense.

> Also controversial, like, if it's a bug, why isn't the refund automatic in the first place.

Have they known about the bug before? For how long? Perhaps it's not an automatic refund because they need to confirm the underlying issue, figure out which users are affected, and only then get management to to sign off on it.

I realize Kagi is loved here, heck I use it myself but this pattern does come off at best lazy engineering and at worst scammy. Their marketing email pitches it off as no strings attached but there is a case where it will auto charge you at the end.

I think some of the ton is a little aggressive but it does seem like something that a lot of other companies would maybe get called out for.

I agree, they should definitely be called out for it. However, I also believe a little grace and understanding from the users is called for. They're a small team trying to do their best, and they've taken concrete steps in the past demonstrating their committment to customer service (i.e. not charging you for a month if you don't use your subscription).

I will admit that I do have a reflexive allergy to conspiracy theories when people jump way over Occam's Razor to get there with little to no evidence, and saying that Kagi is just a "scam" is firmly in that boat IMHO.

It’s plausible that I didn’t see the email because it got spam filtered away, so I totally believe that one was sent.

On contacting support: to your (Kagi’s) credit, Kagi did cancel the subscription and refund the fee after I contacted support. But if I hadn’t been scrutinising my credit card statements for other reasons, I suspect it may have been a few months before I noticed.

[edit: Thinking more: if their ‘no fee if you don’t use it’ policy actually works, I guess I wouldn’t be charged more than the one month. Although that makes it even less likely I’d’ve noticed.]

> But if I hadn’t been scrutinising my credit card statements for other reasons

A bit off-topic, but rather than scrutinizing credit card statements, I find it much better to get email notifications of transactions - that way I can review transactions as they’re made and fresh in mind, and I notice fraudulent or unwanted transactions right away.

Depending on the dates, "no fee if you don't use it" might not have been in place yet

Email is not the best notification method these days. I'd suggest having a notifications delivered directly in kagi's interface as well. Maybe a banner for an ending trial period.

I have been using Kagi since the start. You guys are doing an incredible job.

> This is not something we intentionally do here, and is a feature of Stripe to automatically renew at the end of a trial if there is a payment method present.

Blaming Stripe?

> Blaming Stripe?

Explaining Stripe?

Thank you for stepping up but here's a tip - don't blame Stripe. If you use a 3p in your service, it's now apart of your service and you're responsible for that.

I appreciated the extra detail, and took it as something "Here's what we think caused this, and we're taking responsibility for finding a way to prevent it."

Hey, I've been a subscriber for a while. I love it. I wear the tshirt.

Thank you.

That's weird because Kagi is one of the few subscriptions that gives me an email heads up days before they charge me during the normal monthly cycle.

I'm not sure if it's a Norwegian law or an EU law, but companies here are forced to regularly send reminders that you are subscribed to them, I've gotten them from all the major streaming services I've subscribed to.

We lack such strong consumer protection laws in the US, so I'm pleasantly surprised when something so basic like this happens.

Huh, Norway is not in the EU.

They are part of the European Economic Area, which means they belong to the EU market and their regulations (without voting rights), but they get to keep controlling their fisheries

So, in this context, they might as well be

They have access to the EU market through the EEA but do not abide to 100% of the EU rules, regulations or laws. And they can have their own rules/regulations/laws.

On the contrary, they are the rare SaaS that proactively avoids charging you any period you don't use it.

I will keep an eye on it, but I am 99.9% sure I've never paid them anything or given them any payment information! (I don't trust my brain as much as I did when I was younger, so perhaps I'm forgetting something. But I don't think so!)

Interesting, because I brought this exact thing up last time Kagi was mentioned here, and the founder and billing engineer assured me that it does NOT convert to a subscription:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43308930

Hey,

As I mentioned in my previous comment, it does not convert IF you do not have a payment method set. In this instance they already had one set which Stripe takes as 'this user wants to renew' and instead decides to not cancel it.

I did mention a workaround we could do, and that's something that we will ensure gets done asap.

> In this instance they already had one set which Stripe takes as 'this user wants to renew' and instead decides to not cancel it.

Is this even legal? Ok, maybe in the US...

A friend of mine and I split the cost of a family plan ($20/month) and that way we have four extra accounts to use for our family and the like. The amortized cost is pretty reasonable then.

I'm ok paying a few bucks simply because it gives the site a means of making money that isn't selling my data or tunneling me into some kind of marketing ML model.

And the results really do feel better. I almost never do the !g like I did with DuckDuckGo, and being able to set my own weights for sites is genuinely great. Instead of some arbitrary machine learning model, I have my actual intelligence to assist with the rankings.

> I don't like the 300 search limit, because it scratches my brain - "do I need to search for this? can I find it some other way? should I just use duckduckgo for this search?"

I have been using the free 300 search trial for several months now, and have not found it limiting. In a way, it highlights the strength of the search engine since I devote more time to reading the sites it directs me to than sifting through search results or refining my query. In other words, I am spending less time searching and more time pursuing the fruits of those searches. I am also okay with the idea of using different search engines for different purposes. I have a general idea of which queries will produce good results on DDG or Google, and use those search engines in those cases. I also have a general idea of which queries will generate terrible results on DDG or Google, and reach for Kagi in those cases.

> I'm largely allergic to subscriptions. Still, if I can spend $360/year on Disney/Hulu/Max, I should be able to upgrade my search experience.

I am allergic to subscriptions, which is likely why I am working within the bounds of Kagi's free trial for as long as I can. Once I have used up those queries, there will be a decision to make. Thankfully they are advertising $5/month for 300 queries. It's something that I can live with, even if I do go hog-wild with queries using the model that I have settled upon. Still, I have to get over that allergy first.

FWIW it's possible to replace the streaming services with something like Jellyfin+Radarr+Sonarr or Kodi+RealDebrid to cut the bill down to <$50/yr, and you also get access to media on all streaming services. leaves plenty of room in the budget for things that can't be self-hosted (like a proper search engine). some may cite ethical concerns but i don't think HBO execs making money hand over fist are concerned about ethics at all

As someone who has several friends and family who work in the mid / lower tiers of the entertainment industry... if you want to pirate, fine, but don't act like you're performing a noble act. Are entertainment execs grossly overpaid and exploitative? Sure - not unlike many industries. But lower revenue and lower subscriber numbers do have an impact on the money that trickles down (yes, trickles, sadly) to employees.

I say this mostly because the tech set seems OK with content piracy in a way that they wouldn't be OK with say, shoplifting. I don't see people recommending walking out with a pair of Airpods from best buy because of Apple's ethical breaches.

Shoplifting and copyright violation are not comparable.

Most of us on this site produce copyrighted works for money. Many of us are pretty knowledgable about how copyright works, as it's an integral part of our livelihood. So please don't try to promulgate that weird media industry propaganda here.

Ah yeah the weird propaganda that people labor to make creative output, and if you value that output and have the means, you should consider paying for it.

Also, read what I wrote: "if you want to pirate, fine, but don't act like you're performing a noble act". What specifically bugs me is less so the act - I assume few among us haven't engaged in illegal streaming, paywall bypassing, password sharing etc. - it's the weird contortions people go through to frame piracy as a noble endeavor vs. just admitting they're being too cheap to pay for something.

For me it is rather can no longer afford, and cutting back on dependency on USA.

But if I understand correctly, you aren't cutting back your dependence on the US. You are cutting back on paying for your dependence. If you really want to cut back, consume non-US media.

You should be more worried about Meta doing piracy than individuals: https://torrentfreak.com/meta-torrented-over-81-tb-of-data-t...

So copyright matters only sometimes? If that’s so, I bet anyone who consumed pirated content has had some positive impact on the society because of it.

The ends justifying the means is a pretty popular argument these days.

I agree, and I am?

Why not just avoid their services instead of pirating their content and matching the ethics of their execs?

It's not piracy because they've made it clear that digital ownership is not actually ownership.

because their services aren't fungible

I think the point the OP is making is that just because you can doesn't mean you should. And I agree.

If you feel streamers are offering a bad deal, don't take them up on the deal and find something else to do. If you want to watch shows your friends and family are watching, take the deal.

Ah, I thought they were just confused.

Hey, what do you do for living? Can I have some of that for free?

Sure! https://kagi.com/search?q=how+to+make+websites&r=us&sh=jJWfn...

Oh wow, thank you.

As long as your time is worth <$50/yr...

Just FYI, if you run out of your 300, you can simply renew on that date. So if 300 searches lasts you 21 days, you're effectively paying between $5 and $10 per month. If you run out halfway, though, it's cheaper to pay for unlimited.

That's interesting. It makes you think about searching. It makes you think about the limits, it makes you think about the fact you already paying them for the privilege, it occupies just a little bit of your mind.

It's a clever trick, kind of like how Amazon knows that if you subscribe to their Prime service, you might think about Amazon when you're about to buy something online.

> But I have not objectively done comparisons to try to figure out if it's better or not.

The default search results are nice quality, comparable to Google (they use Google as one of their sources for results). The customization is what makes it head and shoulders better than the rest. I usually don't even see Kagi. In my workflow. Combining snaps, ! (I'm feeling lucky bang), and account level raising and lowering, I can pretty much get exactly where I want on the web just from a query in my URL bar that navigates straight there.

I justify it by having less Disney/Hulu/Max and I’ve just cut down on entertainment related subscriptions in general, although you can pry YouTube Premium from my cold dead hands.

Kagi is one of the few subscriptions I think is 100% worth the price. In fact, I’d pay double. Very happy user for almost two years.

I think part of what's tough is I use two search engines + 2 LLM's, depending on what I'm trying to do. It's easy when most of them are free, but if I'm going to pay money it needs to be much better than the rest, and I don't think Kagi is.

Kagi is so nice. Amazing that it's the first search engine I've seen that lets me do something as obvious as customizing ranking for certain websites. And, of course, the ability to block websites from search results entirely.

It even passes my personal search test - it shows reasonable results and not pages and pages of junkware when I search for "avi to mp4".

I think my only annoyance with it is that it shows me shopping websites for irrelevant countries when in "International" search mode - but that's honestly something I'm not sure should be fixed, especially given how it's impossible to get Google to show English results in a non-English-speaking country.

On a search for "avi to mp4":

- Google shows CloudConvert, then some helpful Reddit threads, then Ask Ubuntu, then some spammy SEO-optimized converter websites.

- Kagi shows CloudConvert, then pages and pages of spammy SEO-optimized converter websites.

Google clearly wins there.

Happy paying customer of Kagi here. because to me intention counts.

Kagi has the explicit intention to serve me their best results.

Google has the explicit intention to get me to click on their customers results.

Happy to pay kagi.

Now Google has no intention to serve you

I've never had any issue using any Google service with an ad blocker. They make plenty off of me via YouTube Premium and Google Flights commissions - both services that I think are valuable, and one that I actually gladly pay for.

You do you. I do me.

Opposite here, but I also don't have a personalized Google search experience, and an exhaustive list of sites in Kagi that I raise/lower/block from the results.

Avi to mp4 is best done with an ffmpeg command written by an llm. But OK, I get that that was not the point.

If you already have ffmpeg, you shouldn't need an LLM to write `ffmpeg -i video.avi video.mp4`.

If there is perhaps just _one_ thing that we can all admit that LLM's are good at, it should be bash one-liners for common tasks.

Which is to say, I highly recommend using an LLM for exploring commands to run in a terminal. Once past the learning curve, it is a good way to avoid dozens to hundreds of cryptic short-options (just ask for only long options).

> If there is perhaps just _one_ thing that we can all admit that LLM's are good at, it should be bash one-liners for common tasks.

Sorry to disappoint, but no can do on that agreement. The web is full of bad advice for shell scripting one liners, because too many people fumble their way to a semi-workable inefficient solution for their specific problem, then instead of attempting to refine it and make it better by removing extraneous options they publish it as is to a blog post or gist. The result is that LLMs ingest a lot of subpar commands.

I’ve tested this many times. It is rare that an LLM returns me a one-liner that I can’t immediately see how to improve.

The interesting thing is that there are objective measurements about code (like unnecessary commands in answers, or code which flat out never worked), in which generally people are not great. The amount of bad answers on Stackoverflow and on most of the blogspam is staggering. Even reference documentations are bad or wrong many times. LLMs work with that. They won’t be better than that.

The llm will tell you there are lots of interesting options.

As will the manual of ffmpeg itself, for what it's worth.

Yes, but a llm (or good old stackoverflow) are faster for most people.

There's pretty much nothing you can't do with ffmpeg https://youtu.be/9kaIXkImCAM?si=KJJOhnoa-2bFLkt5

Did the same here on my Android phone.

Google:First result, occupying half my screen, was a sponsored Google Play junk app, then CloudConvert, FreeConvert, Convertio, Adobe Express, Restream (this one seems like garbage), then a second Play widget and then SEO slop.

Kagi: FreeConvert, CloudConvert, a youtube tutorial, a Quick Peek widget with unhelpful topics, Restream, Adobe Express, SEO slop at the end.

Not that much better by Kagi, but it's pretty good not having any ads. I'm curious why you'd think leading you to Reddit when you searched for a converter is a desirable result, though, and I think you got that because you search for "[term] reddit" so much it defaulted to it via algorithm

It's not just me getting Reddit discussion results - Google has an exclusive deal with Reddit to list it in search results [1], and it tends to be ranked highly now for more subjective/recommendation-based queries. (And I did this test after clicking the "Try without personalization" link in the Google footer.)

I didn't list the ads in the Google results because I didn't see them. There's no reason not to be using an ad blocker, and unlike Kagi, it's free.

[1]: https://www.404media.co/google-is-the-only-search-engine-tha...

So you're saying it's good to have your results influenced by megacorporation exclusivity deals? I didn't use an adblocker because I was using the app, and having to rely on adblockers is cheating for Google, the services should be judged as is. Google isn't above blocking you from their services for using adblockers, too, as we can see from Youtube

Did I say that?

I hadn't heard of that deal. How is that not blatantly anti-competitive?

The best part about Kagi is that if the default results don't seem helpful, one click restricts results to only discussions and forums, which is usually exactly what I want to do next.

Google supports that too. After searching, click “Forums” in the top bar.

> how it's impossible to get Google to show English results in a non-English-speaking country

It's ridiculous because there's even a language option in the search settings, but it does nothing. I had to change my country to United States just to get it to stop giving me non-English technical documentation and wiki articles. But that means in order to get local results for stores etc I have to use Bing/DDG instead.

Does Kagi solve this problem somehow? Like, can I make it give me non-English results for local things and English results for everything else?

In Kagi you can search with a specific country selected or the default "international".

I find it a superior alternative to Googles "wherever you are", but I do a lot of multilingual searches. For example, when I'm searching for french recipes, I don't want crappy American SEO optimized recipe agregators. Selecting the country I live in brings up local laws instead of stuff from other (bigger) countries where the same language is spoken. International works very well for code and general queries.

Kagi has the opposite problem though, there's no way to search for results only in a specific language.

99% of the time I like that English results are included in country specific searches (I keep "Norway" as default) so I don't have to switch back and forth all the time, but when I only want Norwegian results I am forced to switch back to Google.

One thing Google does which I like is that I don't have to fiddle with region dropdowns. I just drop in a keyword in my local language and it knows to switch the results sources.

Kagi should be able to do that nicely, though I'm not gonna suggest anything on their feedback forum, that's already backlogged to the brim.

that sounds good until you want to buy that uniquely named ingredient in the usa and it will only give results elsewhere and you have little control

I'm travelling, and it's weird to get results in a different language with every border I cross. Just because I'm in Spain does not mean that I suddenly speak Spanish. My browser and my Google account already transmit my language preferences!

Use https://google.com/ncr (which stands for "no country redirect" IIRC). Has been working for me in a non-English speaking country for a very long time.

The best incantation I've got to force English Google results is https://www.google.com/search?q=hedgehog&lr=lang_en&hl=en&ud...

For Kagi, I've got it set to give me international results, so technical documentation is in English, but I have to manually change the region to my country for local results - thankfully that's just a dropdown on the same page that remembers your recent country choices.

Sadly your incantation fails for me - I've been fighting this issue for years.

If I copy and paste your search-link but change the word from "hedgehog" to äiti I get back a page of Finnish results.

This drives me mad when I'm searching for a Finnish street-name, or store-brand. My account is setup in English, my browser accept-language headers are English and yet it will constantly decide to switch to Finnish for me. (Except for google maps which will universally show street-names in Swedish. Scream.)

Sometimes I get a "switch to English" link, sometimes I do not. Half the time that takes me to a settings page with a progress of "Saving" which does nothing, and half the time it redirects me back to English search results.

Google's approach to language has literally no rhyme or reason, and breaks on a daily basis for me. But I guess it is what it is, and I continue to put up with it for the times I use it.

You can use https://google.com/ncr which doesn't redirect to a country.

duck duck go have a drop down where you select any county anywhere you are.

want to search in spain while in the UK? so easy. all other searches are completely broken without this.

try searching for an english word in incognito, there should be a yellow box on the right that lets you change to english. dunno about logged in searches

> Amazing that it's the first search engine I've seen that lets me do something as obvious as customizing ranking for certain websites. And, of course, the ability to block websites from search results entirely.

Brave goggles also allow you to customize the rankings to your preference. You can boost sites to varying levels (1-10 I believe), downrank them, or discard (block) them entirely.

> customizing ranking for certain websites [...] the ability to block websites from search results entirely.

These were the killer features for me and why I'm happy to continue paying for Kagi.

That being said, I've (anecdotally, at least) noticed the quality of their search results declining (still better than Google).

I search for a lot of error messages (for example, errors that I encounter while compiling Java code) -- with very unique strings -- only to have the entire first page of results not contain these strings. Even if I quote them. I really want the ability to say "The page MUST HAVE THESE STRINGS". Google used to have "allintext:" -- but even that doesn't guarantee a page will contain a certain string anymore.

Now, when I'm trying to get more insight on an error message, I'll use AI first. And while I get much better results that way, I find it incredibly frustrating because search engines USED TO BE JUST FINE for this use case. Now they no longer are.

I live in a non-English-speaking country, and Google works fine for searches in English. I would say it only works poorly for single-word searches.

Of course, I have my system and browser language set to English, so maybe that's why.

I have everything possible set to English, yet when searching for street-names or other random things I get shown Finnish about fifty percent of the time.

A "change to English" popup sometimes appears with the results, and it sometimes works. Other times it does nothing.

Searching in English for things which feel like they should be okay (e.g. a recent search was "Tag (2018)" to lookup details of the film) sometimes results in Finnish too.

Just curious if you have a screenshot or a list of the top n results for "avi to mp4" when using Kagi so that there is a bit of a data point for comparison captured in thread?

"Paying for Kagi today feels a lot like paying for HBO back in the cable TV heyday. Part of the deal is that you are paying for ad-free service, yes. But you’re also paying for noticeably higher quality."

This sums up my experience tidily. Kagi is a delight to use.

It doesn't make sense ex ante why one would pay for something that's colloquially free. But then you experience it and it feels luxurious. (Before you notice the productivity and curiosity boost.)

I love that Kagi puts the "monetization" icon right next to results so I can avoid navigating to them. This means I'm much less likely to click on Medium.com links and other monetized blogs and sites. Often times the good content is on some personal website where the creator doesn't really care about earning money off it.

Another neat feature is the possibility to rank results or block them manually so you can lower visibility of certain sites. Really help push the scammy sites down.

Compare this to Google Search where the first half page is paid results (ads) and the rest of the results are of dubious quality. And you don't really have much of a way to influence your search results.

> love that Kagi puts the "monetization" icon right next to results so I can avoid navigating to them

One of the things I love about Kagi is it isn't overly opinionated. I'm not particularly sensitive to this issue. You are. Yet until this comment, I didn't notice that Kagi was doing this. It informed you. It didn't get it in my way. That's good design.

> Another neat feature is the possibility to rank results or block them manually so you can lower visibility of certain sites. Really help push the scammy sites down.

The ad-driven search engines refusing to implement this really drives home their conflicts of interest.

I would be very interested to know if Kagi starts to down rank a site for everybody if lots of its users manually down rank it.

I don’t mind Medium being monetized, but I have the domain downranked, because posting on medium is a very strong signal that the content is worthless.

Use reader mode on your browser, and you can read most of the paywalled sites.

Could you give some examples of specific queries (like, tell me exactly what to type into the search bar) where you find Kagi returns better results than Google or DDG? I tried Kagi a couple times and didn't notice a significant difference in result quality, so I'd like to see what people find so nice about it.

You can blacklist whole domains (or subdomains) as well as upranking or downranking specific sites.

This lets you avoid the seo spam (particularly bad for programming sites).

For example. Say I want to know more about python’s built in sum() functions. A google search for “Python sum function” produces results on the first page from:

- w3school

- GeeksforGeeks

- real python

- programiz

- code academy

And only after do I get the official python docs.

On Kagi I have blacklisted all of those garbage sites and the official docs at the top result.

Here's some stats that kagi publishes on how people are using their blocking and a great place to great started with it as well.

https://kagi.com/stats?stat=leaderboard

Is it worth $10 so you don't have to search the Python docs directly? That seems terribly wasteful (monetarily, computationally), when you could use something like devdocs, among dozens of other options.

You can search the official python docs on DDG with !python. So if you search for "!python sum", it takes you right there. They have a lot of other "bangs" that work really well, too: https://duckduckgo.com/bangs

You can do that on Kagi, too. You just don't _need_ to.

Normal users don't want to have to remember magic incantations to not have to sift through malicious "businesses".

Normal users also don't want to have to go through curating their own blacklist of sites to get decent results.

Sure, but given the shit state that Google is, I argue that normal users would rather have to curate their own blacklist a few times instead of being subjected to (at best) SEO spam or (worse) malicious websites.

That's why I use Kagi.

Thank you. Sounds like the search results are not actually much better on Kagi, but the features around search such as blocking domains is where you find the value. That would explain why I didn't see much of a difference when I tried it out without doing any customization.

I don't agree with the distinction you're trying to make. Google also tries to customize your results for you, but does not offer you any control (don't know about ddg). I think of it as the same thing with Kagi, expect I have explicit input into the results.

Some of these changes are subjective. E.g. I have blocked all of Pinterest since it just clutters my results, but other people explicitly want Pinterest in their results. (not I don't know who would want the seo'd programming sites, but that's a different matter).

I haven't set up blacklist for my kagi account. Searched for "python sum", got a link to the python doc as the first result. So imo. you dont need a blacklist.

To me, it is not the results that are the kicker. It is that I no longer have to waste my time filtering out Google customers paying for my attention.

Every result in Kagi is there to try to help ME. Not Google. Not their customers.

And even though DDG is fine privacy-wise, in this regard they are no better than Google.

> It is that I no longer have to waste my time filtering out Google customers paying for my attention.

Can you explain what this means in more detail? (To be clear, I'm not trying to be adversarial, I'm asking for a sales pitch :) )

Google's customers are the companies who pay them to place adverts in search results. The results page includes them and it's not always clear at a glance which results are promoted/paid.

Kagi makes this a non-issue.

I use an ad blocker.

one I like to use to demonstrate is "how to fix a leaking faucet"

Google gives you a full page of ads for plumbers

Kagi gives you instructional videos from This Old House. It's night and day.

I just tried this, and google returned a variety of videos (guides for fixing), and various text/website tutorials (home depot, reddit etc), I had to scroll to the absolute bottom to see an ad for a plumber.

I had the same experience. I'm located in Minnesota, USA, not currently logged in to Google, and I use an ad blocker. First result was a Home Depot home repair article that looks genuinely useful. Then relevant YouTube videos, Reddit threads, an iFixIt link, a link to the Portland government website. I see zero things I would explicitly call an "ad" on the first page.

> @dh nats !

This brings me directly to https://hub.docker.com/_/nats/. Like it doesn't even show Kagi.

> @hn !

This brings me directly to the front page of HN.

> @gh jj !

This brings me to https://github.com/jj-vcs/jj

> !guixc how do I install nginx?

This brings me to https://kagi.com/assistant/071a7584-d0a3-49fe-abe1-635223085..., which includes an answer relevant to my distro from a generic question.

> !p nginx

Brings me to https://packages.guix.gnu.org/search/?query=nginx.

The customization is extremely powerful as you can see. Snaps are also often significantly better than bangs, because sites often have bad built in search (!dh particularly sucks. !gh isn't great either imo).

My experience with Kagi was not as positive as everyone else's here. I didn't find the search results to be better and perhaps that's because I am used to google foo to extract decent results there. So I made Kagi my default engine everywhere and used it exclusively for more than a month before giving up. The response time for search results isn't too long but that difference from google's response time, which I had come to rely on subconsciously for all my queries through a day, was too jarring and even after a month I couldn't get used to it. Having had an adblocker and Youtube Premium I don't really ever see any advertisements anywhere anyway so I couldn't find the value there too.

I would love to pay for search again and not be the product but as of my last experiment(Nov 2024) Kagi wasn't that for me. Curious to know if anyone else had such an experience or perhaps something I need to re-evaluate.

This has also been my experience. The search quality is no better. When I ask people directly what they like about Kagi, it's all about the customization stuff (custom search operators; denylisting domains; etc). I do see the appeal of that, but I don't personally care enough about those features to pay for it.

You also get Kagi assistant which is nice

Part of the problem is that Google has been actively sabotaging google-fu for quite some time now. E.g. ignoring quoting in queries.

Agreed. It is a major annoyance and the primary reason I was exploring other options. However, even though it is infuriating when google refuses to not respect my query, the number of such queries for me are limited and thus I can use Kagi(and lately exploring search in ChatGPT). The amount of such searches I have needed haven't exceeded 100 on Kagi so I haven't had the need to resubscribe yet but if they do I guess I will maintain the subscription. However with the response time issue I doubt I would ever want it to be my primary search provider.

This is so infuriating that it single-handedly made me start looking for alternatives.

There is a noticeable friction now in using Google for searching. A pretty good example of how a decent product gets ruined by accountants and shareholder demand.

What is the value of low latency when the first page results are garbage?

GP literally said in their first sentence that results quality wasn't improved with Kagi.

I tend to agree. I would pay money solely for the features that let you block sites, uprank and downrank sites, but use Google instead. Bonus points if they block the Gemini stuff.

User scripts and browser extensions to the rescue, at no cost but time invested in setting them up.

I have had a similar experience. After using Kagi, I don't really get why someone would pay for what they are offering today.

Daily user for a few years now, the response times have not gotten that much better, but I do like the assistant feature of their higher tiers so I've stayed on for now.

Assistant was surprisingly useful. In a couple of occasions I had it find me research papers I didn't know existed for a problem I had been working on for long. However the realization for me was that I shouldn't neglect search abilities of the LLMs I was already paying for. I tried to replace my Claude and ChatGPT subscriptions with Assistant but the usage limits were too low for me. And for the cases where I wanted to use long context of Gemini models, the assistant had an arbitrary limit of only 32k I think.

However for those where it can work, I think Kagi Ultimate is a great deal.

The assistant recently was made available to all tiers, with only the more expensive models being limited to the higher tier.

Same

As a long time Kagi user, the thing I miss the most is Google Maps integration for search results. It's nice to search for a restaurant or an address, see results for it, and with one click open up Google Maps to see how to get there and nearby attractions. Google Maps is such a large moat for Google, especially in locations that Apple Maps (the only real alternative) has poor coverage.

Outside of that use case, I enjoy using Kagi and recommend it to most people.

Absolutely agree.

Although Google's kneecapped their own Google maps integration in the EU.

If it's of any help, on the top right there's a more shortcut to Google maps when searching an address in Kagi.

Although that's two clicks, would be to Kagi's advantage if they make this process one click or better, especially in the EU.

This. I didn’t know it was EU only thing, but sometimes you have a map displayed in Google search results and there’s no way to actually go to Google Maps beside clicking “directions” button (and I think even this button isn’t always there).

Just recently I’ve created a bang in Kagi which redirects me to Google Maps roughly around my home with a query that I typed.

Yes, kagi has a Google maps link built in but it doesn't integrate very smoothly. It ends up linking to strange results in Google maps. I would almost prefer that kagi just integrated Google maps until the kagi maps product is mature. It's my only stumbling block using kagi

Would an OpenStreetMap integration be sufficient to replace this functionality?

Not OP, but I heavily rely on Google Maps reviews. Haven’t found another platform that replaces them.

I assume it’s region specific. There used to be alternatives in my area, but they’ve all died, and even with all the fake Google reviews, it’s the only way to get an idea about restaurants.

No, Google Maps is miles ahead of all competitors.

In what ways when compared to OSM?

Here is your comment should you wish to copy it and try again: I never run into a business that doesn't exist on Google Maps and I rarely run into incorrect hours. I constantly can't find businesses that I'm looking for on OSM and they never have correct hours.

I use OSM for many directions, after looking it up in Google Maps and copying the plus code because it doesn't come up in OSM reliably.

User content. Businesses update their info on Google Maps, users upload reviews and photos.

Just to add a different voice: I prefer OSM and for me it would be great.

In my opinion, no it's too shit compared to Google Maps, Apple Maps is also not great. Kagi have their own maps, which it seems is based on Apple Maps. Apple has no information outside the US (heard its better in the US but I just know it's not great in Europe or Africa). Things like operating hours.

FWIW I found Google Maps to be terrible on that front in Japan. Posted operating hours seemed to have no particular relation to whether a restaurant would actually be open or not.

Yeah that’s the only type of search that I always append the !g to

You can shorten that to !gm if you want to go straight to Google Maps.

Or just set up a browser search keyword/engine to go straight to Google Maps if that is what you want. I have Kagi as my default but have a small handful of keyword bookmarks set up for when I am making something that isn't a general web search. "m <location>" for Google Maps, "i <title>" for IMDB, "p <query>" for Kagi image search, "d <query>" for D&D Rules Search, you get the idea.

This way Kagi doesn't even see my query, I don't need to wait for the redirect, I get to set up the shortcuts myself and I can switch any of my search providers (even the default) without affecting my "bangs".

I've been using Kagi for almost 18 months. In that time we've had a baby, and I have done many many searches about baby related things. It took months after he was born before I started getting any baby related targeted advertising (I'm pretty sure it was a result of a Facebook post). Whereas for the other parents, every advert they've seen has been baby stuff since well before the baby was born.

I like Kagi, I like the principle of aligned priorities over my privacy and I like the search quality. But that really cemented why it's worth it to me.

No, thanks, I'll stick to qwant: https://old.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/1gvcqua/psa_the_ka...

Same for me. I don't understand why they are not able to cleanly separate themselves from Yandex. Their explanations don't help me understand it but only serve as "we hear you and consciously decide to still fund a Russian company".

If anybody reading this is willing to disabuse me of this I'll try to be open for a different perspective.

It's the same as when Russians are asked about the invasion, "I'm not political."

It's worse. Random Russians interviewed on a Moscow street would risk going to jail if they spoke their mind.

Kagi on the other hand is "apolitical" because it is good for business.

Did you type this comment on a device made in China?

You did the meme: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...

After a quick internet search apparently Google produces Pixel phones mainly in Taiwan with additional processes happening in China and India. What is the point you are trying to make?

When I tried Qwant a few weeks ago, its search results were even worse than Google. So, Kagi it still is.

Is there any sensible explanation why Kagi does funding Yandex? It seems weird to me.

Yandex isn't on any sanctions list as far as I know, so Kagi is free to do business with Yandex. Yandex did need to reorganize (as their Dutch tax avoidance parent company was obviously causing them issues) but looking at https://ir.yandex/press-releases?year=2024&id=05-02-2024 it seems like all of Yandex has been sold to a generic Russian investment fund.

Legally, Kagi can buy access to Yandex' API. Whether they should is a matter of opinion. It's the main reason I haven't tried Kagi yet, and probably never will, as the owners don't seem to have a problem with any of it.

Legally they can. But we all know that Yandex had always had very strong ties with the Russian government. I used to work for Yandex for more than 6 years in early 2010s and even then there were signs of the state trying to influence it through censoring Yandex.News and various other means. And these days you have to be very naive to assume that it is not controlled by the state and people close to it.

> Is there any sensible explanation why Kagi does funding Yandex?

They want access to Yandex's index. Given the quality of Kagi's results, I trust them with that call. Despite the Ukraine war being of deep personal interest to me.

They use their image search results, and according to CEO it sums up to 2% of their costs. I saw an explanation post in their forum about this issue, but can‘t find it right now.

They pay for search results to search providers because Kagi doesn't have an index of their own.

In the link above they say they added Yandex Image search as a provider.

It’s not funding, it’s paying for a service.

Funding does not imply a lack of receiving something in return, only a flow of money. It can be both

Being "apolitical" is no excuse for funding a russian company (yandex). If they did not do this I would probably be a paying customer. There is nothing else in this space that has the trust or features that kagi has.

The other point I have heard them say about using yandex is that there isn't another index that they could use that would be as good. This is a sound argument, but I would rather have worse image search than pay (even indirectly) russia. I wish they would "do the hard thing" and make their own (which I am sure is easier said than done).

I would consider reading Vlad's response to this which is extremely measured and not at all "throwing his hands up" at the issue.

As somebody who is also not a Kagi customer because of this the statement of Vlad is exactly "throwing his hands up".

Two quotes from his response: "Any good search engine remains unimpressed by world politics." "We set out to fix search, not the world."

All the technical explanations between these two quotes could have also been used to justify why they are not contributing to Russias economy. But he didn't do that. That is a conscious choice while clearly being aware of the issue.

They are contributing to Russia's economy so I'm not sure what you hoped he'd say contrary to that. I don't consider someone buying from US businesses to be any kind of implicit support of my government, while at the same time choosing to avoid businesses from a country in the manner desired here is taking a pretty strong political stance.

I agree. He doesn't take that stance and thus I am not a customer and speaking out about it.

Neither of you wish to link to what you're referencing?

> The results were all about obtaining an ETA and I picked a link that looked like the official UK government site. It was not; the official site was lower, below an AI summary

This is both insane and common. Last year I was in Athens with a friend. The line to buy tickets at the acropolis was huge but staff were telling everyone if you buy it online you don’t have to wait at the kiosk. My friend googled “acropolis tickets” and bought a ticket from what looked like the official site. Turns out they were not official. They priced the tickets such that you’d think they were the real Thing too. The real ticket is like $20 for only the acropolis, $35 for the entire site. She got the $35 one, and only later found out that this scam reseller was selling the limited ticket at the full ticket price.