I no longer trust Kagi

Emu7037

k7absp2h Nor was I telling you to 🙂

MustafaD

Pleonasm

k7absp2h Kagi gives me Bing, Google, ...

I also believed that Kagi used the Bing and Google search indices - but, according to a recent blog, that does not now appear to be the case:

"We approached every major index vendor seeking direct licensing on FRAND terms (Fair, Reasonable, And Non-Discriminatory): fair pricing, no mandatory ad syndication, ability to reorder and blend results.... With Google and Bing, we failed...."

MustafaD

Pleonasm No they use Google and Bing indices.

They mean by that: 'we asked Google (and Microsoft) to directly hand us the index data, but they refused.
So we have to rely on what we already do: SERP (search engine results page).'

SERP is basically recreating an index manually from the results which Google/Bing return from their services.

Pleonasm

MustafaD No they use Google and Bing indices.

@MustafaD, I suspect you are correct. Upon reading the blog again, I believe Kagi is attempting to distinguish between direct and indirect access to the Google and Bing search indices: "Because direct licensing isn't available to us on compatible terms, we - like many others - use third-party API providers for SERP-style results" (e.g., HasData or SerpAPI).

@Luis, can you kindly confirm and clarify whether and how Kagi Search utilizes the Google and Bing search indices?

P.S.: Interestingly, if you ask the Kagi Research Assistant (Experimental) "Does Kagi use the Google search index?", the answer is: "No, Kagi does not use Google's search index."

MustafaD

Pleonasm P.S.: Interestingly, if you ask the Kagi Research Assistant (Experimental) "Does Kagi use the Google search index?", the answer is: "No, Kagi does not use Google's search index."

It makes its own index, utilizing SERP results from other services like Google, Bing, etc.
This is because crawling the web yourself and creating an index from scratch is a colossal task.

@blogpost Microsoft spent roughly $100 billion over 20 years on Bing and still holds single-digit share. If Microsoft cannot close the gap, no startup can do it alone.

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