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Comment on You're Not Imagining It: Google Search Results Are Getting Worse, Study Finds

LWD@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

That’s not an engine, it’s a metaengine

Really strange nitpick to bring up as a first point. If Kagi is a meta-engine, then SearX is too. Maybe you simply haven’t tried it, because it cites multiple sources per search.

And Brave has ties back to using Google data:

Brave’s search is optimized against Google search results. Ever since its Cliqz ancestry, documented on the Cliqz blog, it optimizes its ranking algorithm to match Google ranking as closely as possible. Brave’s search discovery project uses clicks on Google’s results in the Brave browser to discover new sites. In other words, it’s not sufficiently different from Google to really diversify the search results.

there is no such thing as free hosting, similarly to Lemmy

People who host Lemmy and SearchX instances are doing it charitably. And SearX does not pay any big company back, AFAICT.

Kagi is a for-profit corporation that postures as not being one, even talking about “fundraisers” and “humanizing the web.”

Big difference.

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loudwhisper@infosec.pub ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Kagi is an engine, searx is a meta-engine. That’s what I meant. Which means kagi does not simply collate results from multiple source (like searx does), but implements its own logic. This means that - for example - it deranks website with many trackers, or can implement various features on top of the results. So it’s not a nitpick, it’s a substantial difference between an engine (kagi) and a metaengine (searx), which is essentially a proxy + aggregation of other engines.

It’s a known fact that brave optimizes result based on google data, and the kagi guys themselves in fact added that - with it being cheaper than google API - it could be a vector to eventually reduce cost for google API without impacting results.

That said, AFAIK kagi does not pose as a nonprofit, I think they make extremely clear that running searches (scraping, paying API, etc.) cost money and that they need to be profitable. Their stance is that by using a subscription model, their business interests align with user’s interests of providing good searches, rather than results that benefit advertisers, which is completely reasonable. This is literally written in their “why pay for searches” article that is presented when they show the pricing.

Of course it is a big difference, and you can argue for pros and cons of both options. I personally think the internet should not be based either on megacorp nor on free labor. Would I prefer kagi being a co-op? Sure. But it’s not like relying solely on free labor is free from any moral implication either (sure, you can donate, and I do to Lemmy for example, but only a minority does).

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- LWD@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  Kagi is an engine, searx is a meta-engine… it’s a substantial difference between an engine (kagi) and a metaengine (searx), which is essentially a proxy + aggregation of other engines.
  
  This is more of a distraction than a distinction.
  
  Kagi’s results mostly come from others. Its community is criticizing it for the results coming from others.
  
  A criticism that, I note, you don’t seem to touch. If you must respond to anything, I would love to hear your response to their corporate decision to fund a shady company run by a shady man.
  
  It’s a known fact that brave optimizes result based on google data
  
  … Known by who? It’s definitely not common knowledge.
  
  [Paying Brave] could be a vector to eventually reduce cost…
  
  Which is a pretty good demonstration that Kagi as a corporation is seeking profit first and foremost.
  
  That said, AFAIK kagi does not pose as a nonprofit
  
  Then you only nitpick the label I gave my examples, not the “we’re all in it together” emotional appeals aping the language of a non-profit. For example,
  
  “We exist to make the internet a healthier, happier place for everyone”
  
  Which I found on the business’ page you mentioned, is written more like they are a cutesy nonprofit than anything.
  
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  - loudwhisper@infosec.pub ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    This is more of a distraction than a distinction. Kagi’s results mostly come from others.
    
    No, this is a big distinction. If you don’t care about it or you don’t appreciate the differences, there are plenty of resources online where these are explained. For once, an engine can parse the query and search based on its own logic. A metasearch will always just use your query and get results from the sources.
    
    Its community is criticizing it for the results coming from others. A criticism that, I note, you don’t seem to touch. If you must respond to anything, I would love to hear your response to their corporate decision to fund a shady company run by a shady man.
    
    First of all, the criticism is from a tiny fraction of the community, and it is about which others the results are coming from, looking at it from a very narrow angle. It is not about the fact that the results are coming from others, but only from the fact that they are coming also from Brave.
    
    My opinion is fairly simple: I believe the damages of funding bad companies is less than the benefits of having a good one, with a good product which can have a substantially good impact on the infosphere, thrive. I believe that Google is a way worse company compared to what Brave will ever be, for example. However, I understand that if Kagi stopped taking results from anything which is not minor scrapers and its own scraper, Kagi wouldn’t exist (or at least, it would be a completely unusable product). If Brave integration can mean less money to Google in the medium term, it is a net-positive change from where I stand. And I am saying this as a de-googled taliban who stopped using any of their services for years. Considering that they integrate Google, Yandex, Mojeek and Brave, I would say that Brave is actually the less-worse of the major ones.
    
    … Known by who? It’s definitely not common knowledge.
    
    Known by whoever read the very conversation on kagifeedback. The company even answered to this particular point:
    
    Brave API is cheaper than Google API. If we can figure out a way to do use it transparently without negatively impacting search results, we can use this to lower our costs (currently we serve both, but this is not the plan long term).
    
    Which is a pretty good demonstration that Kagi as a corporation is seeking profit first and foremost.
    
    That’s extremely surprising for a company which is not profitable and did not even get VC funding. Also, the company has a good track of caring about its users. When they brought costs down, not long ago, they modified the plans and expanded the amount of searches (bringing the middle tear to unlimited searches), passing down the savings to the users. This was effectively reverting a change they implemented half a year earlier -> blog.kagi.com/unlimited-searches-for-10.
    
    With new search sources proving more cost-efficient, the improved efficiency of our infrastructure, and the broader market embracing Kagi, we can again offer an unlimited experience to a broader group of users. We’re excited that this change will let many more people enjoy a fun, ad-free, and user-centric web search.
    
    Marketing move? I don’t know, but what I know is that they did something many other companies would never do.
    
    hen you only nitpick the label I gave my examples, not the “we’re all in it together” emotional appeals aping the language of a non-profit. For example, “We exist to make the internet a healthier, happier place for everyone” Which I found on the business’ page you mentioned, is written more like they are a cutesy nonprofit than anything.
    
    So, I am quoting the fact that the company is extremely transparent about its business strategy, it doesn’t hide the fact that needs to earn money, it is transparent about its costs (incl. per search). You are applying your own bias and interpretation on sentences which in no way lead to intend that they are a non-profit (“utilizing the language of” is not “pretending to be”).
    
    I mean, if you want to believe that they are trying to act like a non-profit, I can’t change your mind. There are direct quote of the CEO talking about profitability, e.g.,
    
    This is part of the reason we included these search results - now we have 4 search indexes to work with and are much more resilient to any one killing the relationship on a whim. This also allows us to optimize cost as we can use different indexes for different queries, which is another important consideration for us as Kagi is not profitable yet.
    
    There are entire forum threads where they discuss subscription models and profitability. It’s overwhelmingly clear that they are a for-profit company, which just decided to use a different business model with the idea of serving internet users (their customers), and therefore “humanize” the web. Now, you can filter out the corporate marketing BS, if you wish, but I see absolutely no ground to support that they are acting in bad faith trying to present themselves as a non-profit.
    
    The main point is that profit is not bad by default. A co-op generating profit is absolutely great, for example. The point is how that profit is generated, and how it is distributed. If the model is based on a fair and transparent relationship with customers, which does not involve squeezing them so that the execs can buy their 3rd yacht, I don’t have a problem with that. If it’s not based on destroying users’ privacy to serve businesses (advertisers), I don’t have a problem with that. I will say more, in a capitalist world, this is the most we can hope for and if all companies would act like this, we would be way better than we are today.
    
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    LWD@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    The decision to fund Brave Corp, run by Brendan Eich, is my chief criticism of Kagi Corp.
    
    First of all, the criticism is from a tiny fraction of the community
    
    Let me put a pin in this.
    
    I believe that Google is a way worse company compared to what Brave will ever be
    
    Brave Corp panders directly towards people with regressive ideologies. I don’t know how that can be worse, nor do you provide any examples…
    
    I understand that if Kagi stopped taking results from anything which is not minor scrapers and its own scraper
    
    Which was never the argument presented.
    
    People even said Kagi should just keep it turned off by default so nobody funds Brave Corp except by choice.
    
    … Known by who? It’s definitely not common knowledge.
    
    Known by whoever read the very conversation on kagifeedback.
    
    The conversation that you said very few people participated in?
    
    You’re quoting CEO speeches at me. Very interesting, but most people just look at the homepage, maybe the About page.
    
    You are applying your own bias and interpretation on sentences which in no way lead to intend that they are a non-profit
    
    I used a quote from an actual nonprofit and attributed it to Kagi.
    
    Apparently, you didn’t notice, probably thanks to how similar Kagi’s language is.
    
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