7 years ago we started the 'you are not the product' movement for digital information consumption with Kagi Search. Since then the paradigm shifted from search to agents. Good to see the need for 'you are not the product' still holds up, maybe even more so now: an agent is only worth trusting if it works for you and nobody else. The second an advertiser gets between you and the answer, that's gone. So we're staying on the user-funded side of this. Boring, but it's the whole point.
Kagi is not only an ad-free subscription. It’s a mental budget booster. Knowing there are no ads and results are higher quality removes a mental load I didn’t know I was carrying.
It’s possibly the single most impactful thing in my digital life.
Thanks for everything, and please keep doing what you’re doing.
These comments feel like llm authored astro turfing…
You know who else sounds like LLM from time to time? ESL - English as a Second Language. People learn English from books, and get introduced to phrases through reading or interacting with others within the same community. So, it sounds like you're using the LLM argument as a way to diminish their voices as well.
As an ESL person who has spoken English as their main language for two decades now I find this very interesting. The vast majority of my English has been spoken with my wife who used to be a marketing VP or in a professional context. Sometimes people complain about the ways politicians or corporate executives talk and I don't get it and to me it sounds totally normal because that's what I'm used to. Makes you wonder how ESL speakers will sound more and more like LLMs because that's a large part of their exposure.
As a native English speaker, I worry about picking up LLM-speak simply due to interacting with Claude Code all day.
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As an ESL, it hurts me to see the atrophy of written English. "Your right!" is just painful.
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I'm a customer of Kagi who is in no way affiliated with Kagi, other than sending them money. I agree with bayindirh: It’s possibly the single most impactful thing in my digital life.
I know that we live in a world where tech increasingly sucks, and positive comments on tech are (correctly!) seen as suspicious. The thing, though, is that Kagi is genuinely just a great product, and search is such a central part of using the Internet that good, trustworthy search makes a huge difference.
>trustworthy search makes a huge difference
That's the rub. Today on the internet, no one can validate that there exists any "trustworthy search". If we don't control the servers and validate the software on it, then we are taking someone's word for it. Most often that someone is a marketing person at the hosting organization. Occasionally it's a random comment on the internet behind a pseudonym we know nothing about.
People are becoming more and more, justifiably, cynical. And it's good for society that they are.
> If we don't control the servers and validate the software on it, then we are taking someone's word for it
That's what trust is, though. I find Kagi worthy of trust since I have no evidence that they are doing anything that would violate my trust in them, and their incentives align with mine. I give them money, they give me good search results.
> People are becoming more and more, justifiably, cynical. And it's good for society that they are.
I do not believe that this is good. Democracies are built on trust. Without trust, they die, as we can plainly see in the US right now, where people are so distrustful of each other that it is starting to destroy the very fabric holding together society itself.
The entire point of the Constitution was to not trust each other. We wouldn't even need checks or balances if trust were a reasonable governing philosophy. Nor a Bill of Rights, nor any explicit admonition against slavery.
The reason we need these and many more is that we don't trust each other. And it's wise that we don't.
This doesn't mean trust is bad, only that the founders, rightfully, knew that it leads to complacency.
What's landed us where we are is not a lack of trust. (We've lacked trust from day one, that's how we got the Constitution in the first place). What's landed us here is complacency.
It's distrust - in foreigners, in each other - that got extremists elected, and it's distrust - in the media, in the institutions - that gives them unchecked power to destroy the country.
None of which would have happened if we had not gotten so complacent about defending our democracy through vigorous enforcement of the Constitution, and voting in a fashion more informed by wisdom than emotion.
At the root of all you lament is not lack of trust, it is complacency. Decades long complacency.
Lack of trust is what our republic was founded on, and the entire reason it was structured the way it was. Our republic is specifically designed to function in a trust-free environment.
But no republic, nor any other organizational construct, no matter how well designed, will survive complacency.
Kagi's business model also aligns incentives better than an ad and/or data mining fueled business model. Of course, this isn't proof, but it is evidence. One can also try the search in areas that one knows deeply and compare it to other search engines to see if it's truly better (I have not done this, but it is possible and isn't just trusting marketing.).
I don't use Kagi primarily because I'm quite averse to subscriptions if I can find another way.
Yeah that one was praising in a non-specific way. Whether or not it’s genuinely a user, it did feel like astroturfing, which is sad if it’s a real comment that they can’t compliment a good service.
If I wrote the features that I like, and god forbid I use a bullet list, then I'll be labeled as a LLM user or LLM again.
What do you want me to do? :)
I can answer your questions if you want? :D
Edit: Heh, I saw your other comment, too.
On the other hand, your comment sounds to me like Anti-Kagi astroturfing.
Together, both comments make a good example of the reason one should not trust what one reads on the internet.
It sucks. But there's just too much astro-turfing.
I'm sure they aren't. Folk (like me!) love Kago.
> Kago
Nice try, LLM! I'm onto you!
This one is so short and only has one LLM-ism, it's entirely possible it was human, I'm 60/40 on it. Unless you are 100% sure it was LLM, please don't call it out.
The funny thing is, In my whole life, this is probably the first time I have used that form, and I wrote it in a completely honest way.
I just want to bang my head to the keyboard.
Reading LLM's all day makes me really cynical, and I have to suppress the urge to judge all text written in that sense. SO I get where they are coming from, but people need to consider that they can be wrong, and that there is a real person whose feelings you can hurt by saying "OH this is like LLM, gotem!"
I can relate, because I also try to understand whether the text I'm reading is written by a human or emitted by a model constantly, and I don't use any LLMs day to day.
On the other hand, I'm not new in the internet, and have relatively thick skin. I'm very amused today by the unintentional attention I got with my cloudy, morning brain.
Nevertheless, regardless of what we do, believe or say, we shall be kind first and remember https://xkcd.com/438/ dearly.
This is what I'm trying to do all the time, but I'm not perfect. Just a human, trying his best.
Surprisingly, Kagi is actually just a really good business. Look at my comments, I despise AI spam and call it out wherever possible.
That comment was obviously LLM authored but it is true. Using Kagi really does feel like taking off a huge weight. Or generally any service where you're used to being the product and then you become the customer instead.
> That comment was obviously LLM authored...
Wanna bet? =]
It's a funny claim about me, who doesn't use any LLMs for writing, coding or reducing any kind of mental or manual load.
My comments are on the open, and I can answer any question or comment you have about any of them. :)
No offense taken though. Made me smile while drinking my tea. :)
> Kagi is not only an ad-free subscription. It’s a mental budget booster.
Likely, the "It's not X, it's Y" phrasing is what probably rang the LLM alarm bells.
LLM's are trained on human phrasings. So now we can't use human phrasings anymore?
I am one of those people that used to write em dashes – and now I self-censor them out of my writings :(
I still use them too. Don’t listen to these nerds. Self censoring is awful.
Yeah, I figured the same thing after reading my comment and chuckled. :)
Wow! Can I ask how Kagi is best for your uses? Would love to try myself
Oh, this appeared late in my feed.
I personally like the ability to filter my own results by promoting, demoting or blocking certain domains to filter lower quality results further. Same for image search which can also filter out AI generated images.
Also, I find lenses very useful (which is a way to limit your search radius) to search for specific things in the specific parts of the internet. i.e. you can define a lens with specific websites for a subject, and if you need something precisely, you can only search these websites.
I recently started to use SlopStop reporting to weed out AI generated webpages from search results, too.
Lastly, all AI features are opt-in. No summaries, no widgets, no extra "bells and whistles" if you don't want on your result page.
Thank you for words of support and love the background picture on your website.
/ot Hamburger menu at the bottom right is pretty nice too. Haven’t seen it there before but seems like a very user friendly choice for its placement.
Hey! Thanks a ton. I took that photo while waiting to board. I don't remember which airport though, need to look at its date. It's an old one.
Thanks again for everything!
eww
It's one thing to throw in a, "hey, I've used this service and I recommend it to others," but this is just gross, blatant advertising.
> It’s possibly the single most impactful thing in my digital life.
Even if this is true, only an LLM would ever believe posting this sentence would come off as anything other than bullshit lol
Thanks for your opinion about my opinion of a service and its effects on my life.
If you can provide me your contact details, I'd love to send my similar comments to you and get them cleared by you to satisfy your standards of endorsement.
For your information and entertainment, ZeroGPT returns 97% human for that whole comment which I wrote while having my breakfast and my phone was laying on the table.
Unbelievable.
Is Kagi still using Russian government owned tech (Yandex) that censors informations about the illegal Ukraine war crimes ?
If so, even if I do agree with your claims about the need to avoid ads so that the user is not the product, I believe there's a double standard in action here.
I really liked the product before having to cancel my subscription for this reason.
Now I'm stuck with boring Qwant and Ecosia...
Well hopefully Oursie.com based on Staan with a subscription system will be a good alternative soon.
As a Ukrainian user of Kagi, their partnership with Yandex is unfortunate, since they are indirectly funding the war, but at the same time I can totally see why it makes sense for the service they're providing
With a service like that you want as much diversification as possible, since western search engines can get heavily censored too. Even if they aren't as censored right now, this might change at any moment with us not even noticing it
For example, right now Yandex tends to be much more lenient to piracy, since it's basically legal in Russia
> For example, right now Yandex tends to be much more lenient to piracy, since it's basically legal in Russia
Likely because most of the pirated content is western and therefor both inconsequential and a way to thumb their noses at the "west."
Yandex is only for image search. Implementing a "I don't want to fund Yandex" option would solve the problem for customers trying not to fund this war.
This would even lower the cost of the user's actions.
Not doing so is a strong take.
EU countries are also funding the war. Which EU-hosted services could we make optional in Kagi, if any?
You mean funding the war to repel the clear, unambiguous aggressor ? Yes.
I agree whole heatedly with severing ties with Yandex, but no, Europe still continues to funnel billions of Euros to Russia; €5.57B in goods (plus €7.81B in exports) and €3.63B in energy[0] in Q1 2026.
[0] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
Make no mistake, western search is censored probably more so than eastern search.
*EDIT* All you need to do is look at how DMCA is handled… TikTok… Instagram… Facebook… Google…
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I don't understand your question. The person you replied to never said anything about a boycott. They said that diversification is kind of necessary, so to use both Russian and American services, as both sides do censor/block different things.
Well that's what Kagi does for you.
'Google Is Censoring Reviews of ICE Detention Centers' - https://theintercept.com/2026/07/20/google-maps-reviews-ice-...
Yes, I have de-googled to the extent possible. I haven't used it for search in more than 3 years, I'm off all of their cloud products including gmail, and I don't use them for auth whenever possible. I'm 100% sure I've missed plenty, but I have to do SOMETHING about Techno-Feudal-Fascism.
This is not the gotcha you people think it is. Browsing HN does not put money in the pockets of the US government. Lost of people the world over avoid US products and services if they can. The jingoism of the US is well known.
Do you use Google? Any Microsoft products? Any Apple products? Any non-Russian computing device?
what’s your point? i boycott russian companies, not american
if you don’t see the difference that’s on you
ok i admitted it, now call me a hypocrite
The relevant difference between Russia and America seems to be - that Russia is killing less people? Or is there another thing that makes the difference for you?
> that censors informations about the illegal Ukraine war crimes
If your concern is specifically about the censorship, then it's not an issue with Kagi, since Yandex is used as one of many sources (and mainly for images afaik)
They should simply stop using any russian tech at this time.
Should they also stop using American tech because of the vast list of American war crimes?
Well there are millions of European trying to avoid US tech. It's hard. A lot harder than Russian tech.
As for the comparison, I don't think it's fair. The US has not yet invaded its neighbor, Canada, leading to millions of deaths and heavy casualties. Let's not adopt your binary view on this matter.
So it's ok if they invade far-away countries, napalm bomb them leading to millions of casualties, but not ok to invade neighboring countries?
The US is responsible for far more pain and suffering in my nock of the world, so it's funny when Americans act like they have some sort of moral high ground.
Whoa! You don't know where they are from. Given time zones, it's likely they are from Europe
Or very far eastern Canada :D
>As for the comparison, I don't think it's fair. The US has not yet invaded its neighbor, Canada, leading to millions of deaths and heavy casualties. Let's not adopt your binary view on this matter.
No, just bombed, invaded, overthrew governments, etc in dozens of countries all around the world...
Yet not annexed anyone so far (seems like US today is another case).
Given that we talk about mostly white European settlers, just the huge majority of native american lands, a good chunk of Mexico, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and several smaller places, areas controlled as "banana republics", Phillipines, and who knows, eventually Greenland, and even talk about Canada, unserious as it likely is.
And with no own ethnic population there to begin with or continuous historical ties to the area.
The US invaded Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, Syria, Latin America etc.
The list is too long. So here's a link showing the list of invasions, bombings, and CIA-backed regime-change operations in other countries:
https://www.davemanuel.com/us-military-interventions-invasio...
The estimates are that the US has killed between 20 and 30 million people after WWII.
And these are just direct kills. The figure is much higher if you count indirect kills through means of economic sanctions.
Yes, I know, didn't you read the "Well there are millions of European trying to avoid US tech. It's hard. A lot harder than Russian tech." sentence above ?
You're comparing a war currently being played by Russia, destroying their own country by the way, to past wars.
I'm not saying the US didn't trigger wars and their casualties. It's of course true.
> You're comparing a war currently being played by Russia, destroying their own country by the way, to past wars.
During the past year and a half, the US has bombed Iran, Venezuela, Iraq, Yemen and Mexico. It has provided free bombs to a country that has been bombing Palestine (genocide), Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran.
It has kidnapped the leader of a country and assassinated the leader of another country.
It has pirated all oil shipments to Cuba, causing a severe crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_United_States_fuel_blocka...
Avoiding Russian tech, specifically Yandex, is also hard because Yandex is one of only three search indexes that aren't corrupted to all hell with business interests. The other ones being Marginalia and Mojeek. Of those, it's the only one that has image search.
They have only threatened to do that, yes
hypocritical scum... US is supporting genocide, killed a whole school full of children and destroying the entire world's economy with their war trying to destroy yet another nation for the sake of jewish supremacists genocidal scum.
The US bombed a school? Where's the worldwide outrage in reaction to Russia destroying HUNDREDS of them in Ukraine? While everyone is hyperfixated on the US, Russia has deliberately targeted schools, hospitals, kindergartens, supermarkets, apartment buildings and far more in targeted terror campaigns. And yet all is silent in the West, in fact every attempt to bring up the evil of Russia is immediately drowned out by BUT WHAT ABOUT. Every single time. It's because this isn't really about schools. This just lets people quietly signal their support for Russia for them standing up to 'the West' by murdering hundreds of thousands of people. Whatever evil the US has committed in the past and is supporting now, Russia has done tenfold in just this war. The list of kidnappings, plundering, torture and rape that they've committed is practically endless. They have no mercy, but many Westerners have had their brains melted by east-vs-west 'discourse' and they won't ever understand.
no one is going to read all this, just say you are a goy slave that worship jews and don't value the lives they kill.. it is shorter.
Bro, it sounds like you have some deep-seated religious hatred in you.
you created a throw394774 to tell me that :) ... no body cares about that garbage any more, we can see the rabid dogs for what they are.
Indeed, the comparison isnt fair. The US is complicit in a genocide recognised by the UN and many of the US's own allies.
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I mean yes, there's an enormous movement to diversify away from american tech currently in the EU, and a massive amount of investment to get away from the entire american tech bubble
I have no idea why you're phrasing this like this when so much money is being put into solving precisely this problem right now
> have no idea why you're phrasing this like this
Because Kagi is in California.
Do we live in Ecotopia ? Did I miss the news ? Hopefully yes.
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Impeccable argument.
Wouldn't that be censorship, too?
You’re not allowed to ask that question.
For what reason? It's a source, not THE source
Have you followed the news?
How the US is attempting to flatten Iran and everyone is boycotting US products?
Maybe we are getting wiser to 'country bogeymen bad' stories and realizing that only bad people do bad things.
Why are you trying to divert the topic?
You don't think the genocide in Ukraine has enough scale of a tragedy, with more than 2 million casualties since 2022? Isn't this enough to flag a product?
The Ukrainians posed no threat to anyone, they didn't have a nuclear program, in fact they surrendered the third largest nuclear stockpile and one of the signatures of the memorandum is trying to delete Ukraine.
Why are you trying to dilute this event which is directly related to the topic?
Is it to try to normalize the crime of genocide in Ukraine?
Because your argument suffers the fallacy of proving too much. You're trying to say that all Russian technology must be boycotted because it does a war, but your argument also says American technology must be boycotted, Chinese technology must be boycotted and European technology must be boycotted. No transistors for anyone who subscribes to your argument!
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/G5eMM3Wp3hbCuKKPE/proving-to...
No, it's simpler than that - there's an ongoing genocide in Ukraine, a country that was at peace and posed threat to no one.
The guys that surrendered their nukes in exchange for security, right?
What I'm saying is that anything that helps prolong this war should be avoided.
It's not a fallacy, it's actually common sense.
You're again trying to dilute the genocide by bringing USA, China, etc.
So why are you trying to normalize one event, by diluting it among other events that have no relationship whatsoever with it?
Why is the Ukraine war the only war that matters? Shouldn't we also stop helping prolong the Iran war? I'm not diluting one event - I'm saying we need to care about all wars.
>Why is the Ukraine war the only war that matters? Shouldn't we also stop helping prolong the Iran war? I'm not diluting one event - I'm saying we need to care about all wars.
Nicely stated.
It matters within the context of this comment thread about a company using assets from specific state commiting genocide that had caused more than 2 million casualties in 4 years.
We're talking about cities razed to the ground, more than a thousand medical facilities destroyed, and of course the systematic and deliberate attempt destruction of a culture - just because they wanted to be a sovereign democracy.
fuckin hypocrite
> No, it's simpler than that - there's an ongoing genocide in Ukraine, a country that was at peace and posed threat to no one.
Cherry picking the facts or blinded by your own beliefs? There was conflict for years prior to the announcement of Russia's involvement on the world stage[0].
0 https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/10/20/ukraine-widespread-use-c...
Stop using all Russian tech for the illegal Ukraine invasion, stop using all American tech for using the illegal Iran war, stop using all Chinese tech for the Uyghur genocide, stop using all Arabian tech for their modern-day slavery, stop using all (most?) European tech for their direct support of the Palestinian Genocide...
Very few acceptable countries left, it seems. Canada, maybe?
Canada, those oppressors of the natives?
I don't really see any difference between this and the vast amounts of of Alaska pollock or cod that is imported from Russia.
The difference is information manipulation, like misinformation.
While there should be a complete sanction of Russian products, cod is cod, it's a consumable that has to follow public health standards.
There's no such thing for information, and for many years the Russian state has been trying hard at it.
Yes, because that never happens in America. Only Russia does that. No one else.
Well the last time the US committed genocide of a culture was way before any tech company was founded, while Russia is doing it since 2022 - by their own admission.
If we count of course the illegal annexation of territory, one of the most egregious crimes against sovereignty, it's been doing it since the occupation of Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine in 2014, you get the idea.
What I don't understand is why you're trying to divert the attention to the US, the topic regarding the current crimes against humanity and war crimes of Russia have enough merits to be a topic on its own.
I think you need to research US foreign policy. They are literally trying to do that with Iran. They helped Israel do it to the Palestinians. Not to take away from the Ukraine atrocities but US is just as bad as Russia.
> "not trying to take away from Ukraine atrocities but making an effort to try to take away from Ukraine atrocities"
Right.
What a strawman
The strawman of someone telling to do research of the US commiting genocide in Iran?
It's not a serious comment, again trying to split the topic.
The US is trying to commit genocide of at least two cultures literally right now.
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Why are you making an effort to split the conversation away from the matter at hand?
Isn't the genocide of Ukraine enough of a subject? Because this is a typical pattern.
Stay focused on the subject, the false emotional reply doesn't stick here.
says the people who started with the emotional replies, but only about the thing they care about, while your side support genocide and ethnic cleansing every single day, every single day, every single day a jewish supremacist kills child and the "western civilization" supports that with every thing in their power. Only you are allowed to be emotional about things that happen to europeans, we are not.
but this is not an effort to split the conversation, this is just an expression of disgust of the scum like you.
This is just a big whataboustim attempt.
no it isn't, I don't give a fuck about russia, but I know for sure that as a european goy slave, you don't consider anyone who isn't european a human being.
I stopped using Kagi news when I saw it has Russia Today as a source for many articles
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Well Russia Today isn't really a news source. It's more of a propaganda outlet. But so are most of the sources that we call news, anyway. Maybe if high quality news sources existed, Kagi could uprank them, but they don't.
This isn't similar to the Yandex situation because Yandex actually returns good results and Russia Today is garbage.
Where is the dehumanisation in “I stopped using this because it makes extensive use of a source I consider untrustworthy”? That seems like quite a leap.
Yes it is a good thing to actively avoid information warfare by adversarial government entity. Its like not wanting literal feces in my food sources.
I say that roysting is eating live kittens. It must be true because a source posted that information
1. Yandex is dutch controlled, the russia-related business got sold in 2024 to Russian investors.
2. Yandex was never owned by the Russian government, albeit government-related censorship happened (but so does on Twitter/Google/Meta etc as they all have to comply with local laws where they operate).
3. Kagi answers questions about Russian war crimes. You can try yourself [1]
4. There's no such thing as a legal war, the closest is a UN sanctioned peacekeeping operation.
[1] https://kagi.com/search?q=what+war+crimes+did+russia+commit+...
this is absolutely not true. yandex IS the russia-related business that got sold in 2024, the dutch entity (now known as "nebius group") is basically just data centers now.
This is naive on so many levels. Yandex is Russian government. You can't take a shit without KGB in Russia.
Only the Russian business is in hands of Russian investors since 2024.
And again, you can check that Kagi answers any query about Russia yourself.
enrico, at this point you're knowingly spreading misinformation. I corrected you in my last comment: the yandex search index is owned by the russian entity. there is no non-russian "yandex" anymore, period.
> After a short transition period following completion, YNV will cease to use the Yandex brand, which will be retained by the Target group. We expect that our International Businesses will develop their own branding going forward. We intend to seek shareholder approval to change the legal name of YNV in due course.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1513845/000151384524...
Not the OP, but I think 'illegal' was for 'war crimes', not 'war'.
Yes of course, "independant" investors that would jump by the broken window by themselves if they did criticize the Kremlin.
Yandex is russian controlled. Everything Yandex related was sold to russians
Google is US controlled. Not really seeing the difference.
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Kagi is directly funding Yandex by sending search traffic to it, which then in turn funds the Russian state and war.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=kagi+yand...
The guy who started it has previously been here on HN defending Kagi's business with Yandex, and personally I think his arguments are BS. Yandex does not add any special feature or functionality that is so great they should make it obligatory to include as a default option.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44596341
Is it? I can't find an official source that supports that claim. Also, Yandex disinvested from Russia and split the non-Russian business into a different company. So is it Yandex or "Yandex (copy)"?
I'm not trying to defend / take a position. I just find it difficult to reason without having an official (up-to-date) source.
Trying to say that Yandex isn't a Russian company is preposterous. It's the largest search engine in Russia and runs tons of other online services that are analogous to social media and cloud things in the English and Western European language speaking world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yandex
they're conflating yandex with the international entity that sold it off to russian investors (now known as "nebius group"). the entire basis of the argument is wrong.
It is https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integratio...
no it didn't. the international entity sold off the vast majority of yandex businesses and assets to russian investors, then rebranded to "nebius group". that is to say that the yandex index/api used by kagi is wholly russian-owned and has essentially doubled down on russia/its allies.
if you're curious, the dominant business retained by the international entity was their data center stuff (though yandex still operates its own cloud business in russia/elsewhere).
The non-Russian portion of the company doesn't include the search engine technology.
I wish I could say that funding the US or Israel or China was better. It's not all equivalent, but pretty much every major country is supporting atrocities in one way or another, today.
I feel like the advantages of cultural exchange outweights the drawbacks. Boycottes should be on the margin or they are counterproductive and bellicose.
I'm not saying I agree with it, but I think this comment
> Yandex does not add any special feature or functionality that is so great they should make it obligatory to include as a default option.
kind of captures kagi's argument: that its removal would degrade search results in a not-immediately-noticeable way, particularly for certain areas of the world, which might actually be worse than a loss of a distinct add-on feature or something.
...but yeah, from my perspective, it'd be great if you could turn it off.
is this a joke? namecheap did years ago the brave move by suspending services to russian customers. why should we support a company that seems involved in russian war affairs?
Unfortunately it appears to not be a joke, my best theory is that either the persons running it have sympathies with Russia and their war efforts, or they value the marginal gain in revenue from having Yandex integrated in some sort of ultra cut throat free market capitalism approach with no qualms or concerns about anything ethical or moral.
What about the US-initiated war in Iran?
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Consider that perhaps the person you're responding to really does treat Russian and the US equally... by continuing to import goods from both, and use technology or services from both countries.
Many people in Europe eat Russian fish, warm their houses with Russian natural gas, use American SaaS, and fill their houses with goods made in China.
That doesn't mean they support everything those countries do.
It does mean their solution for nation-state level conflicts isn't a total embargo of the country.
I would suggest that you ask a Ukrainian for their opinion on the matter, and take a good listen to what they have to say.
And maybe we also ask an Iranian while we are at it...
The market does not ask the ones being crushed between capital interests for feedback.
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The two comments above mine is a clear example on how mob mentality works. Albeit an impotent mob rage among anonymous internet commentators, but the exact same mentality that IRL usually escalates into violence and later into the killing of a designated victim(s).
Lies and accusations get enforced and exaggerated at every step. From purchasing services from a Russian IT company -> " involved in russian war affairs" -> "the persons running it have sympathies with Russia and their war efforts".
I really thought Europeans got this kind of mentality out of their system in the 20th century, but it's alive and well still. And there will be innocent people killed as a consequence. And people here on HN will celebrate and rejoice in that. They know they are on "the right side", and therefore have the right to do anything to anyone. Just like Mr Putin might think over on his side.
Trust me, if you've ever been to Germany and paid any attention to their politics, you'll realize they haven't learned anything from the last century.
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I don’t know if your claims are true, misinformed, rumors.
On the censor bit all companies operate within the law of the country they are in .
They have been confirmed by the CEO of Kagi and its docs. https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integratio...
> On the censor bit all companies operate within the law of the country they are in .
Yes, that's why I don't want my money poured from Kagi to Yandex, a company owned by the state of a country that invaded its neighbour and doing war crimes.
Do you instead, want it poured to companies in the US, A country that invades other countries and bombs schools and hospitals? And is currently supporting another country ALSO engaging in war crimes abd headed by an internationally wanted criminal?
> Yes, that's why I don't want my money poured to a company owned by the state of a country that invaded its neighbour and doing war crimes.
What makes you think Kagi is owned by the Russian state? Should we cancel all US services because the US government started the Iran war for no reason?
They obviously meant Yandex
Kagi is also a company owned by the state of a country that invaded its non-neighbor and does war crimes. So is Google. Is it only bad if the countries are neighbors, or what?
Sure but whatever company you pay for in any industry will do as they are legally told eventually
Goes to the spyware in your tv to the trackers cameras in your EV
Keep fighting the good fight. Also, offering a counterpoint for the sibling comments: Yandex results are the most valuable for the type of thing censored in all other search engines. If I want to search for news on the war on Ukraine I go anywhere, but the things yandex works for are censored everywhere else.
Please reconsider Kagi's partnership with Yandex.
Yes, please do. Your support of Russia is the only reason why I stopped using Kagi and paying for Kagi. I really want to like you and use your product.
If you consider supporting a Russian company equivalent to “supporting Russia”, then I assume you are happy to be supporting the United States by using US services… like the one you are on right now.
Also, people seem to be oblivious to the existence of the neo-cloud: Nebius whose services and servers, a lot of western AI companies use. Nebius was spun out of Yandex 2 years ago to assuage the "supporting Russia" allegations and is still run and managed by an ex-Yandex crew. By that measure, I suppose using a lot of western AI tools is also equivalent to "supporting Russia".
Yandex is especially tightly coupled to the Kremlin from what I've gathered. It seems less like supporting some American indie game development studio and more like supporting Palantir.
Good thing we have Kagi in the middle to firewall it from us, then. It does genuinely return better results for westerners due to not being subject to western censorship. I assume Kagi is smart enough to, say, down-rank or ignore Yandex results when the search is about Ukraine
The criticism is that a share of the money which goes to Kagi goes to Yandex.
I don't see what's wrong with paying Yandex for a good product.
Some people have trouble paying a company that's tightly coupled to the Kremlin
But companies tightly coupled to the White House are fair game? Seems pretty inconsistent.
No, there's a reason there's a pretty large "buy European" movement in Europe right now and why I compared Yandex to the US white-house-adjacent Palantir.
It is not really inconsistent. Despite all the flaws of the current US government, USA is still a relatively free democracy. Russia is a full-blown fascist dictatorship. Russia is also a much more acute threat to me than Trump's USA, because I am from central European country formerly in Soviet Union's sphere of influence, that would be next on the chopping block if Ukraine falls.
Odd attempt at whataboutism, since I think many would also be upset if Kagi was found to be paying Truth Social, for example.
Gathered? Where?
Articles like:
* "The Sad Fate of Yandex: From Independent Tech Startup to Kremlin Propaganda Tool", from the Centre for East European and International Studies - https://www.zois-berlin.de/en/publications/zois-spotlight/th...
* "Different platforms, different plots? The Kremlin-controlled search engine Yandex as a resource for Russia’s informational influence in Belarus during the COVID-19 pandemic", from the NIH - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10130930/
* "How the Kremlin Subjugated Yandex", from GWU's Russia Post - https://russiapost.info/articles/yandex_kremlin
There's lots and lots more out there too on the topic, just a Google search away.
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Highlighting hypocrisy isn't whataboutism.
Highlighting hypocrisy like this is calling out the fallacy of Proving Too Much: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/G5eMM3Wp3hbCuKKPE/proving-to...
In short: if your argument supports the conclusion you want but also supports conclusions that are absurd, it's probably not correct.
What’s wrong with Yandex? How is it any different from Bing, Google etc?
It happens to be Russian. So people boycott it.
You may note that when US goes to war nobody boycott the US.
Plenty of people boycotted (to some extent) the US before that, when it started its trade war(s).
Fair. I should have said that the boycott is totally on a different level.
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Ouch. I was not aware. Cancelled.
It's rough that it's so hard to be an ethical consumer these days. Mullvad gone, Kagi gone.
FWIW I don't think anything Kagi is doing is unethical. If I did - if I did feel it was unethical to spend money at a company that is in a country that does war crimes - I'd also have to feel that almost all spending was unethical, including things like buying lunch.
On a secondary point, if we want more ethical things to exist, we have to create them. If we want an ethical alternative to Mullvad it's on us to do it.
I think the situation you're in affects what you can reasonably do and hence what can be considered "ethical". You cannot opt out of paying taxes (and buying lunch), but it is possible here for me to avoid funding this war and try to seek better alternatives.
Did you go out of your way to buy a non-Chinese-made phone? You technically have a choice there, but not much of one. About as much of a choice as you have in the search engine business.
Chinese phone-makers and Yandex are behaving pretty differently. China and Russia are also behaving pretty differently.
There's no clear reason why someone couldn't have qualms about one but not the other.
Like I wrote, and what you seem to say again here, I agree that it is unfortunate how tough it is to be an ethical consumer these days.
Google? Microsoft? AWS?
Damn, what did Mullvad do?
Founder and CEO funded a Swedish far right party. They stood for roughly 72% of what that party took in.
https://korben.info/en/mullvad-cofounder-funding-far-right.h...
Mullvad has tried to paint it as, "this does not represent Mullvad the company, this is a private political donation" and stuff like that. I don't buy it. Funding Mullvad funds the CEOs.
does this apply to google maps? or only european lives matter?
Thank you so much for Kagi, using it has been the most meaningful change I have made in my digital life in the past 5 years.
Stay boring, Vlad.
Love Kagi. Game changer. Keep doing what you’re doing!
Is being a paid product an assurance you do not also accept much better money from other sources?
Such a refreshing take nowadays. Thanks a lot.
I've been a kagi subscriber for a few months now, and I really want to recommend Kagi to everyone, but the results and index (so far) have been sadly lacking.
I had to use post-nerf, post-lobotomy 2026 Google in quite a few cases.
Kagi likes to hear of searches that don't work well and it's worth sharing on their discord[1]. I have problems with searches there too, and I'm too lazy to share, so I'm kinda being a hypocrite but maybe it'll help.
[1] https://kagi.com/discord
Free user onboarding is awful. Ios safari.
Half the screen is the kagi sign up ad. Not a good show of the product.
Then it’s all black on white. 2026. Color. Contrast. It’s one of the pillars. Google figured this day 1:Dark blue links. Then the line spacing is too high. Information density doesn’t feel right.
Overall 2/10 experience for a 10/10 product.
I'm on Android and honestly love how it looks, but you can blue-ify your links and change the line spacing if you want. Settings > Appearance > Custom CSS and you can do anything your heart desires.
It's a trial
I want to continue to use the enterprise products paid for with billions of dollars of investment, because they still have tremendous value.
Similarly, I want to continue to use the platforms that have all the users, content, and network effects.
BUT - I'd like my own personal agent to sit between everything and strip out the nonsense before it hits my eyeballs.
Ad block used to be good enough, but we can clearly take this much further.
Ads are not the only toxic thing. The algorithm is. Attention seeking from any entity is. The whole internet is adversarial, not just one screen of one product.
An agent could sit between us and the web (or us and our apps) and strip out all the ads, strip out all the clickbait, filter out all the negativity, algo-spam, and low-value content. Calls to upgrade, cookie banners, MrBeast, whatever.
I want an agent that knows me and acts on my behalf as I browse the internet. It should see everything in my browser (or even everything on my screen) and whittles down the bullshit before it ever reaches me.
This kind of tool could focus the whole of the internet into perfect crystal clarity - into an internet whose only objective is to serve me. Certainly not an internet that can make me mad or that tries to convince me to buy things.
Something flexible like this goes beyond just search. It fixes everything on every corner of the internet.
If we treat this as a technology/browser/OS problem, then it can fix everything wholesale. I can continue to use the social media platforms and technology everyone else is using, but I won't be subjected to the bullshit. I don't have to switch to Kagi or BlueSky or whatever small alternative tries to go up against titans, loses the network effects, and winds up as smaller, less-functional offering.
A butler-like agent is a new pane of glass. An internet condom. A judge, jury, and executioner whose only goal is to make sure one stays focused and happy.
This is a product I would pay a thousand dollars a year for.
There are so many things I can write about this, but I’ll keep it short:
Technological solutions to societal problems is one of the shortest paths to hell.
So, no, thanks.
> Technological solutions to societal problems is one of the shortest paths to hell.
This is an unjustified blanket opinion. Sometimes, societal problems can be solved by technological progress. I think you simply lack imagination if you cannot think of any societal problem that would be solved by better technology.
Thanks for your comment. Can you provide me some examples so we can discuss on it further?
For example: the current societal problem of not doing enough against climate change would disappear if we developed cheap fusion power and/or very cheap grid-scale batteries that would remove the intermittency issue from renewables. Such power sources would quickly replace fossil fuels simply due to better economics, no need to change society to care about climate change anymore.
May I interest you in Jevon's paradox: if a thing becomes cheaper or more efficient, usage tends to go up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
How will increased energy use from *carbon-neutral sources* cause climate change?
Sure, so then what does society do with all of the cheap energy? Human nature is still there. Among other things, leads directly to discarding even more plastic junk wherever it’s convenient and no one complains too much.
Recently Animats replied to one of my comments and brought "Megawatt Racks" to my attention.
I work at a datacenter. We provide compute resources to researchers, and while our datacenter is not small or low energy, one of our systems have Green500 certification and we try to do things as efficient as possible.
When I look at our racks, some of them are DLC BTW, and imagine each of them can pack a MW system now, I shudder. Not because of us, but what AI datacenters gonna do with that energy density and how much heat will these systems put out.
Like money? Or agriculture?
Sincerely though, can you explain?
"We need most of our population working full time to keep ourselves fed because running a farm is really hard" is a technical problem, not a societal one. You can solve it with fertilizer and the cotton gin or whatever.
"There's a bunch of us now and barter isn't cutting it anymore" is a technical problem, not a societal one. You can solve it with coinage and banks or whatever.
"The internet used to be fun and useful but now it sucks" is a societal problem, not a technical one. You can't solve it with a federated twitter clone or yet another secure messaging protocol or whatever.
What? Why? Why would those first two be "technical problems" that we can "solve" with innovation, but that last example isn't? What makes something a technical problem vs. a societal problem?
Generally, if you're targeting behavior of the people or the masses, you're targeting a societal problem.
People bullying other people is not a technical problem. People driving dangerously is not a technical problem. People shoplifting is not a technical problem. All of them have different reasons deep down, and preventing the symptom doesn't solve the problem.
When you effectively prevent bullying, the bully might damage something else or may do self-harm to soothe their demons. Same for people driving dangerously or have to shoplift to survive.
When you cure the root problem, which is generally harder BTW, the problem you're technically trying to prevent disappears, too.
Hope this helps.
Taxing the bots for UBI would help more people than it would harm.
> People driving dangerously is not a technical problem.
Complete bullshit. This problem can be completely solved by a technical, not societal solution: actually working self-driving cars. Once they are available, all your imperfect societal solutions to the problem are not needed anymore.
Yeah, that future is certainly here: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-FXvRHHjXSU
I don't believe many understands the complexity of a self-driving car. It's not like programming a couple of agents with simulated sensors on a computer.
That future is not here yet, but my point still stands: once they are sufficiently developed (it's only a matter of time, perhaps 5 years, perhaps 20 years), your societal problem suddenly has a technological solution. QED.
"Sufficiently developed" seems like a cheap proof. There are still many non-technological problems above and below it.
For example, how do you ensure everyone on the road has a self-driving car? We've sufficiently developed electric cars, but they're not nearly the majority.
> We've sufficiently developed electric cars, but they're not nearly the majority.
Just to further support your point, sufficiently developed electric cars' batteries still doesn't have the energy density of fossil fuels, so they can't replace any and every use case.
For example, can we carry or generate the energy these cars requires to move unimpeded like ICE vehicles yet? Or, did we improve the procedures and materials so these cars can be extinguished faster, more reliably and securely then their previous generation counterparts? Or did battery recycling methods became cheap and efficient enough yet, so we can reuse these batteries and at least not increase mining on our planet? Etc. Etc.
I'm not against renewables or electric cars, but even in their current form, we need to solve many problems to make them more practical and even less impactful when compared to their ICE counterparts.
Yes like money and agriculture. We produce enough food for everyone and then throw it away because some dont have money for it. Very good example!
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Didn't I? I have given a direction as a reply. Telling that the road you're planning to go down is not the right one. I have offered you a pruning pattern for your decision tree in your mind, urging you to think on what you have proposed and look at it with a critical eye.
I have offered you to look for other examples, or find a way which has been traveled less or at least ponder on "why?" of this comment. Somebody else did down below, asked for clarification. Somebody beat me to it with a much better example then I can think at that very moment, adding more context and information into my comment.
I don't know you, your circumstances or preferences, hence dictating the way is neither the wise thing to do, nor it's my responsibility to begin with, since you didn't ask me about my opinions about the right way in the first place.
There's help everywhere who dare to look, or explore the the thing they have found and ponder on it. You have a mighty thing in your skull. A brain, a mind. Use it and explore its potential. It might not be easy in the beginning, but it'll be rewarding at the end.
At least, I can promise that to you.
We have an agent between us and the web. It's called a web browser. Or in last millennium terms, a user-agent. You can customize it by installing extensions, unless you chose to use Chrome, where extension support is limited.
That's creating a slippery, echoey slope for the role of the agent / butler. You may end up replacing one problem with another.
People have been trying to use technology to solve the problems technology since this began.
Your solution is probably the worse pipe dream I've ever seen articulated.
You state that current alternatives are too rubbish because you want to use the services you seem to despise. And your willing to pin your hopes on yet another technology to do it because this one is definitely trustworthy and has your best interests at heart... Naivety doesn't quite cover this.
Why is everyone here so myopic?
Why pay Kagi or whatever at all? How can you trust them or anyone, if this is your belief?
Why even pay your ISP? Just go back to candlelight and corn flakes and stay away from radio waves.
You'd better not own a smart phone if this is truly how you feel about the world, because it clashes with what you just said.
Come on.
People here are myopic because of focusing on screens and/or books during early childhood. It causes your eyes to mis-detect the shape they need for optimal focusing.
So people that don't agree with you are myopic?
You solution is to hope that a better technology will be invented that won't be subject to what every technology before it has been subject to. You rally against "the algorithm" and beg for another algorithm to save you. You want to live in a filter bubble and not be challenged on you believes. I can't think of anything worse, but I wish you the best.
Also I don't know what comment you read but it's clearly not mine...
I only have so much energy to reply to all of this negativity. Half of it is being cut off at the legs by HN filters from the constant downvotes and flagging. Downvotes and flagging for attempting to be positive and excited about tech progress.
You're not going to do anything about big tech by sitting on the sidelines. I don't see anyone doing anything about it. Nobody's built websites that show people how to contact their legislators. Nobody's building alternative tech.
We have a chance to use this tech to cut off the big tech overlords. I don't see how you're all missing this. We can literally build new browsers now. It reasons that we can place filters at every level of the stack to catch the stuff we don't like and prevent it from reaching us.
For people who supposedly care so much about tech and privacy and digital freedoms, I just see complaints.
I propose a solution to neuter big tech and you label it as a filter bubble instead of a victory.
But you're probably right - I'd like to filter out every grumpy HN person with a negative outlook sentiment score and move on with my day. It'd save me time. I shouldn't be wasting any energy responding to this den of depression.
Negativity does not equals disagreement. I disagree with you I'm not being negative. I can't speak to downvotes and flagging.
Also I find it ironic that you would state no one is building alternatives when you previously lambasted the alternatives (blue sky, kagi, etc). What are you doing? Apart from engaging in fantasy.
Your solution is to have big tech filter out the stuff you don't like. These agents are a product of big tech. They need massive resources in terms of money, hardware, and resources to run. This isn't tech for the poor and downtrodden, it's tech for the rich and privileged. By the time the poor can afford it (if it doesn't destroy the environment first) it'll already be infected by what you despise in current big tech; if it isn't already.
Kimi is open weights and you can rent cloud compute cheaply. It's only going to get more affordable.
Once a proof of concept exists you can distill it down to something that might execute on CPU alone.
With open weights models you can build systems that rend big tech apart.
Last-gen tech has been tried for twenty years. It's not working and it has never gotten distribution.
You know what does work? Adblock. It reasons that we could build a new form of it.
I would pay for someone to build this because I'm busy building other things. I would literally commit money to anyone who suggests they would build this.
It's a boring answer, but nerds are cynical because they think it makes them look smarter.
> I would pay a thousand dollars a year
More incentive to keep up enshittification, lest your appreciation of de-shittification wane.