Kagi is Porting its Orion Web Browser to Linux
2 years ago by RmDebArc_5 to c/linux
While the software is exciting, I'm not exactly keen due to the controversy
Probably because they're building their own engine from scratch. Many of the popular browsers these days are built on Chromium or Webkit. The only "big" alternative these days is Gecko, which is what Firefox uses.
This matters because Chromium based browsers make up the vast majority of usage and Google has been using Chromium to drive web standards in the direction they think they should go.
Wikipedia has an overview, but doesn't really cover Chromium's market capture. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/...
Tbh way more than that, good link above
An article about Kagi's leadership, uncontroversially titled "Why I lost faith in Kagi." If anyone has updates to add here, good or bad, I'd appreciate it.
Between the absolute blase attitude towards privacy, the 100% dedication to AI being the future of search, and the completely misguided use of the company's limited funds, I honestly can't see Kagi as something I could ever recommend to people.
...and I'm surprised this quote doesn't mention the CEO, considering what the blog post has to say about him.
Ouf, you got me down a rabbit hole. I'll start at the end, where I clicked on a comment of yours laying out why Andreas Kling and Brendan Eich are assholes. This FOSS tendency to support 100% meritocracy becomes a bullshit lie the moment some lead devs use their position to spread vile views, deny harmless PRs to improve phrasing etc.
I have yet to meet a single self-proclaimed "centrist" who isn't just a racist/misogynyst/homophobe in sheep's clothing.
Meritocracy enables sociopaths.
Well really it should be "Pure unadultarated meritocracy in FOSS development enables latent sociopathic behavior to come out unchecked in nerdy devs" or some such, but that's not much of a slogan.
Anyhow, about Kagi & Vlad & the writer of this blog post (I really read it all) - I am always so skeptical about FLOSS trying to go financially sustainable. Usually people applaud it because they think it's a solution to "slow development and clunky UIs", and usually people like Vlad like to support that feeling without really committing to anything.
Also always interesting the lack of commitment when you press them about data collection. You can't run a web app like this without data collection, and the distiction between personally identifyable, private, anonymised or anonymous is - facile because as legal terms they were coined by people who have no clue about fingerprinting and such.
All in all I'm glad with the road I have chosen in device & software usage and just like the Brave hype did not get me, neither will the Kagi hype or the next one.
Come on.. this comes up every time Kagi gets mentioned anywhere. Someone is personally hurt by the CEO and is now in a crusade to spread bad karma about them.
As a product I really enjoyed Kagi for years and would still be my preferred search engine if I wasn't switching away from US products and services. I am now using Qwant but honestly imo Kagi is pretty good and worth the money
I don't see how your comment responds in any way to the criticism presented.
this comes up every time Kagi gets mentioned anywhere.
Because it's relevant. Should I never share it because you've already seen it? What about those who haven't? I haven't seen Kagi properly address these issues. So I asked about newer developments I might've missed. No one volunteered any yet.
Someone is personally hurt by the CEO and is now in a crusade to spread bad karma about them.
The author clearly explains how they arrived at their stance, and it wasn't just "hurt feelings." I'm not claiming this was what you intended, but it feels like you're trying to dramatize the criticism and downplay the issues rather than address them.
I also don't see the crusade thing. They wrote down their thoughts, then others found and shared them. They're not the ones posting in ycombinator, or here. It's people like me, unaffiliated with them. We just think more people should know.
You finished saying you liked Kagi and think it's good. There's nothing wrong with that, but I don't see how it helps here, either. I used Kagi for a short while and liked having more control over results, but... the issues remain. It's beside the point.
The long and short of it is, Vlad wanted to get me on a call to discuss what he felt were "misunderstandings" in my post. I declined. He pressed a bit with more argument, I explicitly spelled out that I did not want to hear from him again. His response to "stop emailing me" was to write me a big essay arguing with my post (kind of, I'll discuss this more). I sent one more reply reiterating for him to stop emailing me, and that was it.
This to me more sounds like I have made up my mind to not like this guy or his product and nothing will change this. This is personal and even most of the issues being discussed are nit pickings at details and fights on being right or wrong on things that really don't matter
This to me more sounds like I have made up my mind to not like this guy or his product and nothing will change this.
That's a really unfair reading of the situation. People aren't obligated to listen to us and change their minds. As long as they're willing, sure, do your best, but no means no. Vlad seemingly doesn't understand no. That's not good, and added to their previous insights, I can understand why the author wouldn't want to enter a call with a such a person.
most of the issues being discussed are nit pickings at details and fights on being right or wrong on things that really don't matter
It might help if you elaborate, but right now I can't agree. For example, Vlad's views on privacy and biases are kind of wild (no suicide hotlines numbers because they're biased but also put LLMs everywhere) and that matters if you're going to use his product to search information online (and possibly his e-mail service as well).
Okay, and? It's a proprietary browser for a company sponsoring paid search using a Russian engine. I'm quite happy to avoid.
Are you talking about Yandax? They announced that they're getting out of Russia.
I do wonder why they're not building on top of an open source engine or making their own engine open. We absolutely need an alternative to Chromium. It's sad that this likely won't be it.
Oh, you're right. I wonder if they will start contributing to webkit as a result.
I'm also happy that Chromium's total ~75% share, once you lump in edge, opera, brave, etc might maybe get chipped away a little.
Any word on Windows? Despite the discourse around Kagi using Yandex, they did advise me that they are still building thier own indexes that are planned to eventually replace thirds party ones.
I'm still not a huge fan of the overuse of AI, but I do think Kagi is on the right track in a lot of other areas.
edit: I'm in the Linux community.... Ignore the first sentence 😅
I wish there was a cheaper plan that didn’t involve AI at all. Like, I don’t care to have X prompts every month. I’d like to pay just for the engine.
Maybe "overuse" isn't the right word. "Over-investment" maybe.
I think the Universal Summarizer and Quick Answer are okay but the Assistant just doesn't do it for me. No one is forcing me to use it or pay for it however and I don't run the company, so it's a moot point...
They've reiterated that AI is central to their mission, I just don't find the LLM interfacing very compelling personally.
It's optional to use though. Just a feature that is up to you to use or not
Yes, I know..I'm not saying I need to use it or that it's forced on Kagi users. I'm saying that I personally don't agree with the amount of investment and focus on the AI/LLM integrations. I believe the investment would be better spent building out the Kagi index as well as privacy & security functionality. Again, it's a minor complaint and personal preference, not an attack on their business model, strategy or mission.
I still pay for the Ultimate subscription because I believe in them thoroughly. I just personally don't prefer to use LLMs most of the time.
So, duckduckgo also uses Yandex, right? I know Bing as their premier, but all these search engines use more than one source. I haven't been able to see where any of them provide their entire list of sources. DDG and Kagi both previously listed Yandex and have since quietly disappeared their mention from their informational pages
Honestly when I first heard of Orion, i was stunned by the idea of having both chrome and firefox extensions on iOS and at the idea i would say this browser is my only choice on my iPad.
But things doesn't work out as I imagined. The default ad/tracker blocker is not fully functional at blocking even if I use custom rules, so I installed uBlock Origin. To my surprise ubo doesn't work at all. I then searched web and found in kagi community, some people complain ab this while others saying this is not reproducible. So I would say this is an occasional occurrence but for me it's just 100% because ubo literally doesn't block anything on any page. Other extensions I use daily on my desktop ff browser didn't function either, unfortunately.
I like Kagi search and the idea of warning trackers on the website and spotting promotional contents is just great. But paying $10 a month only to get results from Google, Bing and mojeek? Not really a big fan of that, I would rather give the money to mojeek to help them improve their search results instead of paying to an aggregator... And they are not even the best aggregator there, I mean there's selfhosted SearXNG which is unbeatably accurate and would only cost $2/mo on my VPS.
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A community for everything relating to the GNU/Linux operating system (except the memes!)
Also, check out:
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Tbh Ladybird is way more interesting. This is just another Webkit based Browser
Edit: wow the dev sucks
save