1y ago

Kagi is now partnering with Brave

So #Kagi is now partnering with #Brave, i.e. the company of Brendan Eich, who has been CEO at Mozilla for eleven days before he had to leave due to massive criticism of his homophobic views. Brave's most well-known product is a browser with its own cryptocurrency, co-designed by Eich. A feedback po...

Quite a controversial decision.... I love Kagi though, but I don't understand why they would want to drag Brave into this.

87 comments

Suddenly I am a lot less interested in Kagi.

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.
- Google allows Brave to run ads, so by using Google you're promoting homophobia... Microsoft allows Brave to run Windows, so by using any Microsoft product you're promoting homophobia...
  
  I assume you're demonstrating the argument, not actually arguing it

Probably because brave is kind of the king of advertising in the space.
They managed to sell tracking activity for monetary gain as a privacy centric product.
- Probably because brave is kind of the king of advertising in the space.
  How is that relevant here?

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?

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.
- Don't forget the Brave CEO being ousted from Mozilla for being massively homophobic, donating money to try to overturn the right for gay couples to be married.
  E: and them injecting affiliate codes when you copy some links, tracking users. Particularly bad when they relentlessly market themselves as being private
  
  Has he done more than giving 1000 USD in 2008? Any statement for example?
  
  These days it's easy to get label as -phohic
  Men can't pregnant
  Men aren't women
  
  He didn't support gay marriage in 2008. Neither did Obama, but he gets a free pass. Is Obama massively homophobic?

That's not a good look for them.

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.
- In fairness to Kagi, if you’re seeing a lot of it on Lemmy and Mastodon, that’s because nerds are gonna nerd. There’s a huge concentration of tech folks in those spaces and there’s a huge culture of prostelytization, “I know best so I must educate,” and “I just found this cool thing!” within the tech community. People remix the intros they got with their spin. Until the communities in these spaces significantly diversifies, you’ll see a ton of that. Kagi might be paying for some guerilla marketing; I chalk it up to tech oversharing.
  In all fuck you to Kagi, Brandon Eich is the last person you want to attach your cart to for solid results. We should now expect explicitly paid results worse than Google that materially improve Eich, crypto bullshit through the roof, and a complete lack of privacy to Kagi who won’t share it so it’s totally cool guys.
- they've just (as in yesterday, on Jan 5th) added a Lemmy/Kbin lens to their engine (meaning that it's easier to search specifically the Threadiverse):
  https://kagi.com/changelog
  Kagi is popular on Lemmy and a lot of Lemmy users are using Kagi. We have released the first version of a Lemmy/Kbin search lens
  I don't really think they've been playing some kind of a long guerilla con of advertising here for half a year and then adding a feature that would make searching more convenient for their supposed covert marketing department.
  and if they did, the Brave decision is about to backfire on them.
- It was organic, because Kagi is just better. the recent issue sucks though and I cancelled. Might uncancel though. Changes are rapid on the Kagi Discord.
- I doubt Kagi actually spent money for guerilla marketing. I myself often recommend Kagi on Lemmy before this because it's actually good (and I certainly didn't get paid). Now I'm going wait and see how it develop before deciding if I'll recommend it to others again.
- Nor should you, now that you know the project is beholden to scumbag money.
  Capitalism ruins everything.

already cancelled my subscription and mentioned that when the form asked me why I was cancelling.

Brave has their own search index, that could be very useful for a search engine.

I don't understand why they would want to drag Brave into this.
Because money.
- Right. They flat out said the Brave API is cheaper.

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 had no idea (the CEO of) Brave was so bad 😢

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
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)#Collection_of_donations_on_behalf_of_content_creators
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)#Insertion_of_referral_codes
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich#Appointment_to_CEO_and_resignation
  
  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.
- Edit: The people downvoting this comment instead of having a discussion are really winning me over to their side /s
  Welcome to the linux world of ideology driven recommendations.
  I fell for this crap when I switched from using nvidia to amd because the constant bashing that nvidia gets by linux users only to discover that hardware acceleration is so broken on amd that using the cpu yields better results lol.

Seems like a match made in heaven, a bigot and an asshole.

This is why federated FOSS solutions are the best.
- This statement makes no sense. Federated search means nothing. Ultimately someone needs to scrape, index, store and retrieve data. At the moment, a handful can do it efficiently, and to have a wide coverage, engines use also other APIs. Kagi does this, for example, by combining Google and others (e.g. brave) with their own indexer.
  How do you imagine a "federated" search would be any different? Using multiple APIs is effectively "federating".
  As I said in another comment, to be fully ethical you should not run on any major cloud (owned by Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Oracle and IBM), not run on anything on fossil fuels (few DCs), not use any API of major companies (google, apple, etc.) and so on. So basically if we ever want a new, better, solution (tech) we just need to materialize a few billions of dollars to allow this fully ethical solution with no dependency on immoral parties. Alternatively, the whole market dynamic should be disrupted, because that's the problem.
- Are there federated search engines?
  
  I thought there was but I think I was thinking of searx.

Whatever Brendan's personal views, he was a better CEO than Mozilla's current one... And I say that as a gay dude.
- He absolutely wasn't a better CEO. He lasted 11 days and in that time did nothing other than kickstart an anti-firefox movement lmao
  
  Still did less damage than Baker has managed to.

Yup, don't forget to distance yourselves from the other brands mentioned because of bad political and social views that are not conducive with today's social standards.
Further the cause ✊️

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