Quite a controversial decision… I love Kagi though, but I don’t understand why they would want to drag Brave into this.
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They are using brave search results, like they do with others. Frankly, you could build totally identical arguments (and to be honest, much more serious) for “partnering” with Google and Microsoft, but then the product wouldn’t exist and wouldn’t be as good.
The relationship with the Brave founder is so indirect, that this - to me - feels like an argument from someone who is looking for reasons to get angry. Kagi probably uses AWS (or other clouds), which funds Amazon (known for terrible worker rights), funds Google, fossil fuel industry, etc. It’s a sad reality, but you simply can’t exist nowadays in the moral and ethical way many people would like. You can, only if you are a privileged one. Technologically speaking, Google can probably do it, for example (own hardware, DCs, tech etc.). We can choose to fight those that directly support political agendas we disagree with, or we can damage the smallest players by demanding they will be 100% pure and ethical by not having any relationship with those with those agendas.
In my personal opinion, such unrealistic ethical requirements end up being a reactionary choice as they will ultimately impede new - better - players to emerge and will leave the existing - worse - dominating.
In my personal opinion, such unrealistic ethical requirements end up being a reactionary choice as they will ultimately impede new - better - players to emerge and will leave the existing - worse - dominating.
That’s an excellent point. Never thought about it that way.
That is kinda disappointing. I had a distaste for Brave after all the initial controversy regarding the ad blocking, which only got worse from the crypto crap they now have in the browser.
I’ll still keep paying for Kagi, but this is a step in the wrong direction in my opinion. Let’s hope at least the results get noticeably better.
Whatever Brendan’s personal views, he was a better CEO than Mozilla’s current one… And I say that as a gay dude.
already cancelled my subscription and mentioned that when the form asked me why I was cancelling.
They retracted the term “partner” as they are to Brave as they are to Google. I still might cancel but we were paying Google API fees already so hmmm
I’ve no stake in either Kagi or Brave (and have my own issues with Brave and their CEO), but “partnership” seems like a stretch of definition here assuming this is in reference to the Brave Search API being added as another source for search results. Am I missing something here?
Kagi December 28, 2023 Release Notes
We have added Brave Search API as an additional source of results. With this, Brave API joins the growing list of Kagi’s search sources, ensuring that if you can not find something on Kagi, it does not exist on the web. This will come at no additional cost to you.
Am I missing something here?
the part where Brave Search API is paid, and some people (including myself) don’t want their money to contribute to Brave’s business.
To better understand (and definitely not dismissing your opinion), was Brave where you drew the line as a customer or was Google, Amazon, etc also of concern where Kagi pays for services?
I drew the line at Brave.
Fair enough. IMO, Brave isn’t a big enough player compared to many other companies in the enterprise space used by Kagi (both that we know of as consumers and wouldn’t know of without being an employee with knowledge of their internal SaaS agreements) that Kagi’s specific use case of Brave specifically would have been the deal breaker (for me).
Personally, getting that granular with money flow quickly becomes untenable as a consumer as every business will, to some degree, end up paying for some level of service from the companies we hope to lessen the power of. As a consumer example, I may really dislike how Google is influencing the standards of consumer data privacy in the world and choose not to pay for or use Google products/services directly, but I couldn’t imagine boycotting all companies that use Google Workspace internally for email, docs, sheets, etc.
Kagi seems to be a main player that’s opening the conversation of paying for internet search when the world is used to a standard of “free” search, so saying they can’t utilize the existing search data sources is going to make that experience dead in the water. We need ripples if we hope for change.
Edit: sudneo‘s comment actually summed up my thoughts pretty well.
In my personal opinion, such unrealistic ethical requirements end up being a reactionary choice as they will ultimately impede new - better - players to emerge and will leave the existing - worse - dominating.
A lot of people really don’t like Eich. When he was promoted from CTO to CEO of Mozilla, half of Mozilla’s board resigned (one said it was because she refused to be a member of the board that appointed him, the other two didn’t say why they resigned) and there was a massive campaign to get rid of him including websites showing popups to all FireFox users telling them to use another browser because if Eich.
He lasted 11 days as CEO of Mozilla, and founded Brave after leaving.
You can count me as one of those people so don’t get me wrong; I’m all for not supporting Brave or Eich. I was just curious why this instance where Kagi is paying to use Brave’s search API (which, IMO, doesn’t carry the weight of being labeled a partnership any more than me being a partner with Sony because I pay for PS+) among many other companies/products is the dealbreaker for those that use Kagi. And there may be more to the story (or maybe there is an actual partnership I’ve missed) so I’m open to being more informed.
But if thats the root of the controversy, I can respect that even if I don’t necessarily align with the level of outcry here.
I dislike Brave because they cultivated a not-so-deserved reputation. I see newcomers to privacy being recommended this and it’s just sad.
I use Brave an don’t understand the hate it gets. Seems like a good alternative to Chrome if you don’t like ads. Can someone fill me in on where the hate comes from?
Edit: The people downvoting this comment instead of having a discussion are really winning me over to their side /s
I wasn’t aware of the tipping controversy. That’s not a good look, but I don’t use their crypto features (apart from IPFS every once in a while).
No tech company is squeaky clean in 2024, and Brave’s baggage seems better than Chrome’s.
There is also Vivaldi to consider.
firefox is a lot easier to use than brave imo (since in brave you have to change half the settings to get it to work well)
This is why federated FOSS solutions are the best.
Are there federated search engines?
I thought there was but I think I was thinking of searx.
Kagi can go fuck right off with whatever guerilla marketing program keeps constantly putting it in my face.
It’s clearly not organic growth, and I will never try it because now I don’t trust it.
