Kagi — a new paradigm in web search

Vlad Prelovac, Kagi founder, at Random but Memorable:

Vlad: In every transaction, there is the currency. And so, because the price of this is zero, people assume that there is no currency involved because we usually measure value in monetary terms.
“The truth is, though, that there is always a currency, and the currency used here is your time, your mental cycles, your productivity, the fact that every search you make, every website you take is being tracked. And finally, the behavior change. Let's not forget that the whole purpose of advertising is to change your behavior and make you do things that you would otherwise not, right?”

Vlad is then talking about the benefits of using Kagi Search. In summary:

• Manual personalization of search results: you can increase or decrease the importance of a source in your search results, or even block a source entirely
• Lenses: aggregates searches from multiple sources, user specified. For example, when you want to look for a movie, you may want to search only on IMDB, Trakt, Letterboxd, and Rottentomatoes; instead of sorting through Wiki pages, Reddit posts or Quora. You gather all movie related domains in a single lenses and search within them. The time to answeris going to be reduced dramatically.
• Relevance: Kagi does not reinvent the wheel: it plugs into all search engines (including Google) but strips them down of ads; therefore it makes the result more relevant for the search.
• The main goal of an ad-based search is for the user not find easily what they are looking for so that they are shown more ads the next query. Kagi, not depending on ads, has the opposite objective: the least time to answer. So much so that the number of searches for the average user on Google halves when moving to Kagi, which is to say Kagi, because of its business model, is two times faster.
• AI: good for summaries (Quick Search or Assistant), but always opt-in
• Future: public search engines, like public libraries. 3 types of searches: ad based, paid and government-based search
• Orion Browser — zero telemetry browser from Kagi, ad blocking native, iOS & macOS

There is a slight change in paradigm in all that Vlad is talking about Kagi, compared to old / Google search: it is not the user querying the web that matters anymore (which is, in Google’s eyes, the one that needs to be targeted with ads), but the query itself. Kagi changes the agent of thesearch action: the query itself is the first class citizen, not the person that issues the query. It may seem a small change, but when it propagates through a business model, it becomes groundbreaking.

When a person is the one doing the search, the supplier of the answers will always be tempted to upsell: what else would the user be able to buy, what kind of sales pitch should I expose them to?

From this upsell-centric approach, an increasing miss rate in proper answers is just a no-brainer.

While if the first class citizen is the query itself, stripped down from the details of the person behind it, the supplier can no longer upsell anything. There is no face behind that query, no intention, no possibility of negotiation.

The business model Kagi uses enforces this type of paradigm, which is to hide the person and consider the query as a thing, in itself, as if it was created out of thin air. Query ex nihilo.

Regarding the business model, Vlad and his team bet on common sense alone: they would rather not become the next Google, they don’t strive for the top ranks; they just want to be self-sustained by their paying customers. Starting with April 2024 (if memory serves), they have achieved financial autonomy, meaning the revenue from Pro customers is above their costs. The more customers, the better. There is no better or more humane business model in this world.

One word about Kagi Quick Search.

Bangs in search were introduced by DuckDuckGo some time ago; they are commands you can create in the form of short words or syllables to send them to your search engine, so it redirects your search to a specific site-search. For example, if you are looking for a YouTube clip, instead of using general search, you send the search box an instruction saying “look for XYZ clip on YouTube”, and it only searches on YouTube.

On the other hand, Kagi came up with this summary of the most relevant results; it’s something that reminds me of the “I’m feeling lucky” days of Google. Kagi Quick Answer is trying to respond in a natural language to your query by summarizing the best matches in its result tables.

For example, if you ask Quick Search “What are the best horror movies of 2024, based on IMDB rating”, it will try to bring a list of said movies in a small text box.

It’s far more impressive when you use it than it sounds.

“I’m feeling lucky” was never so lucky as Kagi Quick Answer!

The link with the bangs is you can throw anything to a Quick Answer with a simple “?” question mark in your query. It’s simple, it works, it’s frictionless.

I’ve been using Quick Search ever since they launched it, and I will never go back to normal search. I understand I’m lazy, sometimes I need to check whether my spelling is correct or the sources Kagi quotes are not BS, but hey, I’m just trying to have a glass of iced water in search’s hell! And nobody else can do that today but Kagi.

(Notable mention: ARC browser is doing something similar, you can directly ask a question tin ARC search bar, and it will return a natural language answer, with citations and good visuals. The important difference is, Kagi being a service and not an application, has a much broader reach, being client-agnostic.)

On Kagi Orion

Orion is a browser Kagi is making for iOS and macOS, that has zero telemetry and integrates natively with Kagi services. I have been using it occasionally, as it is smooth and resilient. I prefer though my existing setup with Safari on iOS and ARC on desktops because I’m using a Windows machine most of the time, where Orion is not (yet) available.

I cannot recommend Kagi enough. I’ve been using it for a year and a half, nothing in between. Their $10 / month tier includes unlimited Quick Search, you will never need anything else. On top;: no ads, Bangs, Lenses, zero telemetry, excellent visuals, viable business model, no BS team, excellent support.

Disclaimer: I am not paid by Kagi.com in any way, on the contrary, I am paying for their services.