I concur on Kagi. Now when I go to other search engines I just get frustrated.

>Maybe Kagi is an option for you?

Thanks, but I'd rather have my tonsils extracted through my ears. Unless you're buying.

From the FAQ[0]:

>Kagi Search requires an account only because it is a paid service which requires an account for the transaction.

[0] https://help.kagi.com/kagi/faq/faq.html#why-does-kagi-search...

You pay with your data instead, which is a fair choice.

Yes, unlike google who takes all the pesky account business out of the loop and does the tracking for you!

Either you pay for the product or you are the product for someone else who is paying. I know which I prefer.

They say this:

> You can create a Kagi account with any email address including a fake one (we do not care or verify it, it is just an id for logging in)

But seeing how they didn't go the Mullvad way, and instead chose to ask for an email during signup and hide this bit of info in a completely separate page, doesn't sit too well with me and comes off as a little bit dishonest (they say they don't need this info but sure seems to me they seem to want to have it).

And part of the message I get from reading their F.A.Q. is that a valid email address might start being required at any time soon.

Sure, they would have payment information anyway, but if searches are also linked to email address, that means companies that offer free services can try to buy this information about their free users. So even if you don't pay for, say, Discord, they can still be interested in the searches that are linked to the email address you signed up with.

The difference in privacy between Mullvad and Kagi is not even that much since both are paid services; but Mullvad can get my money and a good chunk of my internet activity, while Kagi doesn't get either from me.

Look, I don't mind too much paying for stuff. And even if I'm paying, I wouldn't even care[1] if I get non-intrusive non-tracking ads (i.e. just text, or first-party <img> tags) related to stuff that I don't delete from my search history. Show me ads for anime figurines, or new releases of light novels, or nice notebooks, or shops selling plants, or computer parts, or a new Steam Deck, stuff like that. I would even help fine tune the ads if it means I get better recommendations (or fewer bad ones, at least).

But it's these kinds of mixed signals, like trying to project an image of offering better privacy than what's common[2] while also doing the email address thingy, that give me a lot of pause when I'm evaluating a service.

[1]: I'm aware my stance on ads is unusual here in HN. I wouldn't disable my adblocker, but if done right, I wouldn't need to. I haven't gone out of my way to block HN frontpage ads (yet), for example.

[2]: That's the subjective impression I got, which might be wrong. The rest of my comment was written based on this.

Verbatim from Kagi FAQ:

"Why does Kagi Search require an email address? We require an email address to be able to verify the account really belongs to you in the following cases:

To handle the account recovery (in case you lose your password) In case you contact us via email with an account related questions (in particular requests to delete your account or change your subscription) To occasionally send product updates, which you can disable in your Kagi settings or unsubscribe directly from the email Note that you can use an anonymous email provider such as SimpleLogin with Kagi Search and it is up to you what email address you want to use.

Kagi does not need your personal information and the above requirements are just bare minimums needed in order to be able to operate a subscription product business."

It's similar to services like Bitwarden in that regard.

Mullvad can get away with not doing that because they have a single plan with a low price.

Yes that's what I'm sayin'

>> [...] instead chose to ask for an email during signup and hide this bit of info in a completely separate page, [...]

>> they say they don't need this info but sure seems to me they seem to want to have it

>> And part of the message I get from reading their F.A.Q. is that a valid email address might start being required at any time soon.

>> But it's these kinds of mixed signals [...]

If they had presence here in the EU, then at least there would be some legal risk (GDPR) for Kagi if they do the deed and get caught. Higher than their current situation at least, where we only have their word.

> I'd rather have my tonsils extracted through my ears.

That will probably also cost you ten dollars or more...

Yep [1] is also a new interesting search engine, based on the index that Ahrefs [2], a SEO toolkit, has been keeping for 13+ years.

The only downsite is that it's slower than DDG and Google.

[1] https://yep.com/ [2] https://ahrefs.com/

Very reactionary, but an index built by an SEO toolkit sounds like the worst experience, ever. Isn't SEO the thing which broke online search to begin with?

> Isn't SEO the thing which broke online search to begin with?

I'd say that was maybe the case in the beginning where spamming meta tags in your page made you rank well.

These days I feel like there's also benefits from the technical SEO front where search engines prioritize pages that are fast, work well on mobile, have correct meta information, don't load large images, pushed the adoption of https at the beginning etc.

You said slow...but even trying that landing page took 4 seconds for me.

Kagi has the same problem for me. The results don't load about 50% of the time. I had to cancel my subscription because I couldn't just roll the dice every time I searched to see if it would come back. Happens to all devices on my network.

Not disputing your experience, but fwiw I've been using kagi since it was in beta (now a paying customer) and I can't remember this ever happening to me.

I feel like maybe this is your network. I've been using Kagi for months and have never even once had this happen, nor has anyone, ever, not even once, reported this kind of issue on the Discord.

Have you contacted their support?

I've never seen that, maybe some extension, content filter gone rogue?

Came here to praise Kagi (and Brave Search) as well.

I'm a Kagi user and unfortunately they are reselling Google Search results.