For the past year or so, I’ve been using and enjoying the search engine Kagi.
-
Which is it? Doesn’t matter.
When I give a company access to all of my searches, I’m giving them an •extraordinary• degree of trust. Earning that trust from me requires a keen ethical awareness, and a sense of responsibility that never shrinks into the shadows and says “Not our problem! Not our responsibility!” when market forces raise ethical questions.
I want a company with a moral compass and a spine.
7/
I want to know that the people at a search company believe that my ethical concerns are their concerns, that they view social responsibility as their responsibility, and that they won’t duck under a rock and make expedient excuses for themselves.
Who is that company? Not Google. Not Microsoft.
I’d hoped it might be Kagi.
Nope.
8/
-
I want to know that the people at a search company believe that my ethical concerns are their concerns, that they view social responsibility as their responsibility, and that they won’t duck under a rock and make expedient excuses for themselves.
Who is that company? Not Google. Not Microsoft.
I’d hoped it might be Kagi.
Nope.
8/
Search is a wasteland right now. Alas. And there are no good choices.
But look, if I’m going to •pay• a company money for search, it needs to be a company run by ethically mature people. If and when Kagi is run by such people, maybe I’ll give that paid plan another go. For now, well, maybe these childish people will blunder their way to maturity and maybe they’ll just blunder, but either way, they won’t be doing it on my dime.
/end
-
Search is a wasteland right now. Alas. And there are no good choices.
But look, if I’m going to •pay• a company money for search, it needs to be a company run by ethically mature people. If and when Kagi is run by such people, maybe I’ll give that paid plan another go. For now, well, maybe these childish people will blunder their way to maturity and maybe they’ll just blunder, but either way, they won’t be doing it on my dime.
/end
Thanks for this thoughtful post. Not familiar with Kagi, but the ethical dilemma is old as the ages. Something is developed with the best of intentions, or at least marketed as such. It gains traction, and the idealism of the founders is tested over and over again with progressively greater incentive to join the dark side. Eventually the magnitude of the payday is just too great, the deal is struck, and "don't be evil" goes out the window.
-
@CptSuperlative Back to DuckDuckGo for now, very very very open to suggestions.
-
Thanks for this thoughtful post. Not familiar with Kagi, but the ethical dilemma is old as the ages. Something is developed with the best of intentions, or at least marketed as such. It gains traction, and the idealism of the founders is tested over and over again with progressively greater incentive to join the dark side. Eventually the magnitude of the payday is just too great, the deal is struck, and "don't be evil" goes out the window.
@mastodonmigration For me, the Brave question was only a question — but the ineptitude of this response suggests to me that either (1) the founder is not ready to play with the grown-ups or (2) the founder is secretly terrible. At this point, even if they pulled the Brave relationship, I’d still be out. This is not somebody ready for prime time.
-
Search is a wasteland right now. Alas. And there are no good choices.
But look, if I’m going to •pay• a company money for search, it needs to be a company run by ethically mature people. If and when Kagi is run by such people, maybe I’ll give that paid plan another go. For now, well, maybe these childish people will blunder their way to maturity and maybe they’ll just blunder, but either way, they won’t be doing it on my dime.
/end
@inthehands Thanks for the explanation. I was trialing Kagi, but not convinced of the balance between gains and extra effort. If now the gains vanish …
-
@CptSuperlative I’m fully satisfied with macOS Safari for browsing, but have considered Vivaldi as a replacement for Chrome for using GSuite (which I always keep sandboxed in a separate browser).
-
@inthehands Thanks for the explanation. I was trialing Kagi, but not convinced of the balance between gains and extra effort. If now the gains vanish …
@doritc Yeah. I mean, even more than search quality, what I was paying for was trust. With that damaged, it’s not worth paying for.
-
@CptSuperlative Back to DuckDuckGo for now, very very very open to suggestions.
@inthehands FWIW I'm sticking with Firefox and DuckDuckGo. But I am dreading the most likely inevitable decline in quality of both.
-
@mastodonmigration For me, the Brave question was only a question — but the ineptitude of this response suggests to me that either (1) the founder is not ready to play with the grown-ups or (2) the founder is secretly terrible. At this point, even if they pulled the Brave relationship, I’d still be out. This is not somebody ready for prime time.
Think you are right. No idea about this particular case, but imagine the founder(s) to be a technical sort, maybe kind of unsophisticated, perhaps young. Coded up a cool thing and got it going. Now, things change. They start to be approached by some real sharks who puff them up and tell them how big it could get. They are completely unprepared to play in this league, and boom it's done.
-
For the past year or so, I’ve been using and enjoying the search engine Kagi. Its search results are…fine, no worse than others, and it’s ad-free, stated privacy as a primary goal, and seemed to have a better ethical sense than its competitors.
Or so I hoped.
1/
@inthehands welp, rip kagi, back to searching for search engines again
-
@inthehands welp, rip kagi, back to searching for search engines again
@mia@void.rehab @inthehands@hachyderm.io we just suffer through duckduckgo
-
@JessTheUnstill Yup. And…I guess I do consider people’s human rights “political” inasmuch as there are always ways human rights are under threat in any society — and since “politics” is the word for “the set of activities associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals,” well, then, politics is the word for how we fight to protect (or destroy) those rights. (Similar thoughts to yours from different angle, I think.)
-
@CptSuperlative Ah, I just use the super-sophisticated technique of closing tabs all the time and then searching my history in desperation.
-
@ben_hr Yeah, same. Bummer.
-
@phiofx Yeah. As per upthread, I’m actually quite sympathetic to whatever forces might be pushing them to collaborate with a highly objectionable company. It’s the response that’s the deal-killer. Even more than search quality, what I was paying Kagi for was •trust•. That’s damaged now; these people are at best too immature to be trustworthy. At that point, what am I paying for?!
-
@admin Will give it a whirl!
-
@ChildlessBambino@mastodon.green Hadn’t heard of it before. Thanks!
-
@inthehands Sorry, I don’t think such a company exists or can exist. Companies are not people. Companies are entities that do what they are legally permitted to do for the sole purpose of maximizing profit for shareholders and enduring to do it again and again. That is their obligation and it dominates over any other concern. It is a grave mistake to expect human virtue from a corporation. They will ignore ethical requirements not enshrined in law or market forces.
-
Search is a wasteland right now. Alas. And there are no good choices.
But look, if I’m going to •pay• a company money for search, it needs to be a company run by ethically mature people. If and when Kagi is run by such people, maybe I’ll give that paid plan another go. For now, well, maybe these childish people will blunder their way to maturity and maybe they’ll just blunder, but either way, they won’t be doing it on my dime.
/end
I had been considering kagi very loosely but it sounds like another "pro status quo company pretending to be neutral".
Very informative thread! Thanks!
