Again, if nobody sees a problem, there's nothing to solve, but then there's also no need to bend the facts in the process.
I think you're misunderstanding what is being said. People are acknowledging that it may not be fair (and the world isn't fair, sad but true) but Kagi is predominantly a premium product by definition and when unit economics don't work out there isn't much that can be done by Kagi at this stage to fix this. I think @Vlad's answers explain the situation well.
Also examples from Youtube, Spotify etc aren't a good comparison because the subscriptions remove advertising and the amount of advertising revenue per click/view differs based on region, in other words the amount of money Youtube gets from a free user by showing them ads is more in a high income country and less in a low income country, so it makes sense that they adjust their pricing based on that. It's not like that for Kagi. Data centers don't charge Kagi less based on where queries originate from, so it's not a fair comparison to cite Spotify, Youtube etc. Also Apple is a silly comparison as well, they are the world's most valuable company with billions of cash while Kagi is trying to find its financial footing to guarantee longer term survival.
It seems to me like some of the posters in this thread have fairly limited understanding of the world economy and the concept of money, but luckily, that's not really relevant for this topic. Only two things seem relevant:
Also if I may, you are making way too many assumptions in this thread, like "rich white people" "you don't understand world economics" "there is huge potential to save money" etc..
1) What you're saying is not a novel concept and people are able to understand things when you explain it to them.
2) It's impossible for you to know that there is a "huge potential for savings" without knowing the inner workings of Kagi. It can even be interpreted as rude, because there is this person who has been working on this thing for 7 years or so at this point and probably knows the pricing inside out, and he tries to tell you that this is how the unit economics work, and you come back and tell him that "No you're wrong, there is a way to do it cheaper". Like it is maybe possible that you know it more than him, but you are giving very superficial examples and comparing Kagi to juggernauts like Apple, Google, Spotify, Youtube etc. so it makes me think that you actually don't know more than him but just trying to enforce your opinion on others. These are basically different companies in different stages of financial independence and I don't think it's a fair comparison.
I am indeed from a country with a very low income and even for people who aren't, it's not hard to understand the implications. It's just that there is not much that can be done by Kagi is what I understand from @Vlad's messages and I respect him and the team enough to know that if there were a way to do it, they would be trying their best to do that, but right now it is just what it is.
Hello there, another Brazilian here, student in tech, I found this thread envisioning the same thing, the possibility of regional prices, but then some very smart people on this thread showed that it is not so simple as just lowering the price because of the current financial situation of the product.
Alright, I think some of you raised good points, and the way I see it, Kagi has a fixed cost per search and is (from what I understood) still in the path to become truly profitable, something that we as users want to, right? Otherwise, this product would eventually cease to exist as we know, for it is a product, thus it needs to be profitable.
We all like Kagi so let's hope it keeps on going.
That all said, I believe we should try to come up with ways to make the company more money without throwing away the essence of the product, or maybe lower the costs, not sure that it is even possible. If that happens, then we can discuss for a lower price or opportunities to bring discounts and such in a manner to make this product reach more people.
I am not one of the smart people who can come up with such good ideas, so maybe someone smarter than me can follow up?
What do other companies do that Kagi could also do that won't compromise its values and the core proposition of the product?
Sell T-Shirts? (Evidence number no.1 that I am NOT one of those smart and creative ppl)
eskidost As to not let the voice of ignorance have the final say in this thread...
As Kagi is a privacy oriented search engine, there's indeed quite some stuff that the Kagi folks can't know about. By my own estimate, at least 20% of my searches are utterly wasted, and I'd be surprised if anyone elses percentage is much better - that's what I was thinking about when I mentioned the potential to save money. That is not an insult, it is a mere observation, and if at all, it is you who is rude for jumping at me like that.
I also think you are hurting the potential of this forum by attempting to silence people who are trying to keep an open discussion, but at the end of the day, it's up to Vlad and others to decide, and if they let it fly, so be it. And it is fantastic that you respect the Kagi team enough to know they're trying their best, but this is a feedback forum and not kagirespect.org or kagiyouguysaredoingthebestanyway.org so in the rare cases I still show up here, I will not refrain from giving my honest opinion on what I believe could be improved, if it is ok with you.
On a personal note, neither "there is huge potential to save money" nor "No you're wrong, there is a way to do it cheaper" are actual quotes from me (nor is "you don't understand world economics" for the matter). Similarly, it is not me who compared Kagi to Spotify - I simply picked up on a comment by Vlad - and I never even mentioned Apple or Youtube in this thread. I'm out of here, but if we ever meet again in another discussion, I ask you kindly to refrain from twisting my words like that in the future (or if you insist on making these things up, at least do it in a thread where I'm not participating). Thank you.
By observing the discussion, I can conclude that:
I cannot agree more with some arguments made here about:
Search costs make up 90% of Operational costs as @Vlad pointed out, with 1.5 US Cents per search.
My questions are:
I love Kagi and have no complaints over anything. The only bottleneck in the whole process is "Per Search Cost". If it were to be optimized, the target audience would be inclusive of all strata of the economy. I really believe that the arguments made in this thread are in good faith, only to improve kagi but may have sounded otherwise. I love to see Kagi addressing this issue and propel to greater heights.
Why do you assume that the price should go down if Kagi can bring their operating costs down? It is standard procedure for companies to try to bring down their operating costs, but they do that also to increase profit, or to build up cash for investments.
If it were to offer discounts, it would be through Government sponsorships or other privacy-first initiatives.
If we are able to reduce price we would do it for all users. If any government want to subsidize the cost for their citizens so they can use Kagi, we are completely open to it. Bottom line is that search is not free and someone has to pay for it. It also costs the same to search no matter who is making the search or where from.
Is there a way to bring the search costs down ?
Not without also reducing the quality of search. And nobody wants to pay for bad search.
Can Kagi run its own search indexing without relying on external providers, at least in the near future ?
We already have our own index, but again nobody would pay for it. It is not enough.
If yes, will it require a substantial sum of money ?
Microsoft spent 20 years and $100bn building Bing and I do not think anyone would pay for Bing quality of search.
Also to add that it does not make sense to offer any search plan for less than $5/mo as credit card processing fees are already eating 10% at $5 and this would get closer to 35% at $1/mo.
Have you considered caching ur external search api calls. I’d assume, naïvely, maybe at least 20-30% of searches are not unique. Does google tos prevent that? Sounds like a worth while risk even if (after speaking with eff to see if they would defend you probono). Or does your privacy focused architecture prevent it?
Tomodo That's an interesting thought, there's a few privacy-preserving ways to go about that I can think of (of course I don't know about Kagi's backend!) but I think there'd be a few issues besides any TOS violations.
How often would this cache update? Might be kind of annoying if some searches are a day or more outdated. Could be solved by exposing the fact it's a cached search to the user and letting them choose to use an un-cached search, though that might negate any money saved.
How big would this cache be? Considering we only have 20k chars of custom CSS it might be fair to say Kagi wants to save storage space where possible, this would have to be weighed in the pricing of cached vs un-cached too.
It depends on the usage stats. But even caching for 20-30 minutes should show improvement on high frequency queries
Edit: also cashing should happen serverside
