Vlad To me, those questions are spot on, but if nobody sees the/a problem, then there will be nobody to brainstorm with. And finding a solution will be hard, I have no doubt about that.
The "replies" leave me kinda dumbfounded, because they have little to with what I posted.
#1 "rich white people" is a simple demographical remark - nothing political, let alone a matter of racial hatred or envy. If I was under the impression that Kagi would be used primarily by Kermit the frog, I would have pointed it out just the same. The bet is on - I bet anyone willing to hold against it a case of of beer that the average user of Kagi will have a higher income and a lighter skin tone than the average user of, let's say, Google. That's not an opinion - rather it's a claim that can be proven or falsified. If it's falsified, there's no problem. If it's proven, but everyone is happy with it, there's no problem either. But if that's not how Kagi is supposed to be (see the mission statement above), it might be worthwhile to discuss.
#2 I don't compare Kagi to Google for moral reasons, for ideology or for business concepts (and again, I have no idea where this is coming from). It's a simple fact that both are used for searching the internet, Google is dominating the market, and Kagi is fighting for a share of that market (in that sense, they are direct competitors). Whether you or me refrain from comparing apples and oranges doesn't matter, because that's what every internet user does when they choose how to search the internet. By focusing on Google's "surveillance capitalist business model", you are missing out on the fact that their "pricing" is actually quite socialist: While US users may generate USD 400 per year, a user in a lower-income country may only generate USD 4 per year but still get to use the same search features. If Kagi is planning to cap out at a couple million users, this is completely irrelevant, but if they intend to become a serious search contender (and again, their mission statement suggests just that), they need to wrap their heads around this, or else it'll become a huge growth impediment.
