> it's also entirely possible to use a moral stance as just one of many facets of evaluation.
Agreed. I'd need to see evidence of that, though. People are lazy, and they hide behind moral stances that are completely impractical to avoid having to think through the complex moral realities of the decisions we make. I don't have a lot of patience for this. If it's part of a multi-faceted analysis, then I'd expect to see that reflected in the comments the person makes. That's not true in this case.
> I personally wonder how much less useful Kagi would really be without Yandex? Only Kagi knows, really.
It's not your decision. Your decision is whether or not to pay Kagi for their service. Kagi produces a product that tries to provide the best value, and doesn't surveil you.
I've debated replying at all, but I am genuinely perplexed by this comment as a response to the quoted text:
> It's not your decision. Your decision is whether or not to pay Kagi for their service. Kagi produces a product that tries to provide the best value, and doesn't surveil you.
Did I imply it was my decision? I don't think I did. In fact, I pointed out that I don't even have the data available to me to evaluate the decision against the decision-making axis I provided (how much value is Yandex providing to the search results?) I am struggling to understand what you're trying to get across here besides contrarianism.
The hard fact of the matter is that you are obviously right: I cannot make decisions for Kagi. This was never in question. I can share my feedback with them and vote with my money.
> Kagi produces a product that tries to provide the best value, and doesn't surveil you.
I took your musing about the value of removing Yandex as creating a sort of spectrum of hypothetical products that could be offered, and then musing that some hypothetical one would be better than what exists. My point was: we can only select from what exists (or who exists), and then work with them from there. This was intended to tie into a larger theme I'd been trying to emphasize around choosing a product that's closest to your ideal, and then iterating towards perfection from there. The moral-stand approach is to go with free stuff because you don't want to give money to a non-perfect product/company. My assertion is that single-factor approach is something I see regularly, and an approach that leads to suboptimal choices in the long run.
My statement about Kagi was not indended to be someone we'd prove, but rather what the company themselves has stated as their intention, in contrast to their competitors, who don't even try.
Cory Doctrow has written up some findings with respect to how Google search results are intentionally bad. When Kagi uses Google's index via the API (that's paid!) they can produce a better search product than Google does. That's notable!
Assuming you seriously considered Kagi, and have now chosen not to pay them, where have you turned for search?
Agreed. I'd need to see evidence of that, though. People are lazy, and they hide behind moral stances that are completely impractical to avoid having to think through the complex moral realities of the decisions we make. I don't have a lot of patience for this. If it's part of a multi-faceted analysis, then I'd expect to see that reflected in the comments the person makes. That's not true in this case.
> I personally wonder how much less useful Kagi would really be without Yandex? Only Kagi knows, really.
It's not your decision. Your decision is whether or not to pay Kagi for their service. Kagi produces a product that tries to provide the best value, and doesn't surveil you.