The Kagi Search Sources docs does not mention Yandex

[deleted]

The page
https://help.kagi.com/kagi/search-details/search-sources.html
does not mention the use of Yandex, which many (including me) find controversial. I was a happy, paying customer, but cancelled my account immediately when I found out about it. I would not have signed up, had it been mentioned, and therefore feel cheated. I think new users should not be expected to go through the change log, when a page (seemingly) explicitly documenting search sources exists.

The site mentions internal indexes:

sourced from our own web index (internally named "Teclis") and news index (internally named "TinyGem"). Kagi's indexes provide distinctive results that help you discover non-commercial websites
[...]

As well as some 'niche' providers:
https://help.kagi.com/kagi/search-details/search-sources.html#niche-sources

I understand that the following covers Yandex, as well, but I feel hiding such a sensitive issue under 'others' or 'much more' is dishonest.

No use of Yandex, or
Honestly documented use of Yandex, clearly indicated among the sources.

[deleted]

I cannot edit the title; admins, please fix the typo in the title: Yandes -> Yandex

batuhan

it's not about Yandex it doesn't say Bing either

[deleted]

batuhan Also, what's wrong with listing Yandex's results?

Quoting Wikipedia:

In July 2024, in a transaction brought about by international sanctions during the Russian invasion of Ukraine and restrictions on foreign ownership, Nebius Group, the Dutch holding company that owned Yandex, sold its Russian assets to a group of Russian investors for a discounted price of US$5.3 billion. The publicly identified investor group includes Alexander Chachava (25%), Pavel Prass (15%), Lukoil (15%), Alexander Ryazanov (10%), and senior management (35%). However, it is speculated that the publicly identified owners are intermediaries for others.

You can find many articles on how the Russian state infiltrated/acquired the company.

batuhan it's not about Yandex it doesn't say Bing either

Whether it uses Bing or not has nothing to do with whether it uses Yandex or not. True, if it uses Bing, it should say so, just like if it uses Yandex, it should say so. My greater concern is state-controlled Yandex, though.

batuhan

Also, what's wrong with listing Yandex's results? I'm very satisfied with the quality of Yandex's results. Also, their visual results are very good for many topics.

batuhan

[deleted] This is still an insufficient argument for removing Yandex. Currently, there are only 3 major search engines that continuously index the entire internet. Google, Bing, and Yandex – removing any one of these could prevent users from finding what they're looking for in many search queries.

[deleted]

Sure. Kagi has the freedom to decide which other services it relies on (though giving the impression that all indexes it uses are its own (sourced from our own web index (internally named "Teclis") and news index (internally named "TinyGem")) is dishonest; it only mentions Wolfram and other specialty (niche) sites explicitly).
And I have the freedom to take my searches / money elsewhere, it is as simple as that.

As long as

Kagi uses Yandex,
there is reasonable suspicion about Yandex being owned/controlled by the Russian government
Russia is at war with Ukraine,

I won't be using it.

batuhan

[deleted] I really appreciate your clarity on this topic. Rather than just thinking in plain logic, considering its other effects is better for everyone.

Dexter

Maybe in addition we can chose our search engine in the future. Like SearX and Metager already allow.

RoxyRoxyRoxy

Is Yandex not covered under “Our search results also include anonymized API calls to all major search result providers worldwide”? Yandex is indeed a major search result provider. Imo it doesn't really make sense to single out Yandex on this given Kagi's stance on bias/politicizing search.

Dexter This was brought up another Yandex-related thread and was denied, it would greatly add complexity in fetching results and debugging issues.

Luis

@[deleted], we are not discriminating against any of our upstream data source providers in our documentation. Are you suggesting we explicitly do so?

Please note that we tried this approach in the past but decided to remove it as it often led to unproductive discussions and derailed potentially valuable ones. This is why we edited that page -- github history will show the previous versions.

I hope this clarifies your question. I'llö close this thread unless I failed to addressed your point. Please let me know if that's the case.