this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2024
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17
Kagi is now partnering with Brave (chaos.social)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
44 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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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[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (2 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I dislike Brave because they cultivated a not-so-deserved reputation. I see newcomers to privacy being recommended this and it's just sad.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I drew the line at Brave.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

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 singularly 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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

These days it's easy to get label as -phohic

Men can't pregnant

Men aren't women

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

You don't get labeled as "phobic" for thinking that - you get labeled as "phobic" because you've made it, and your complete inability to mind your own business, your entire personality.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I don't understand why they would want to drag Brave into this.

Because money.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Right. They flat out said the Brave API is cheaper.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

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

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago

Nor should you, now that you know the project is beholden to scumbag money.

Capitalism ruins everything.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

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...

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] -2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

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)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

This hasn't been my experience

[–] [email protected] -2 points 10 months ago

Firefox doesn't even come with ublock origin installed, brave has all the lists built in and will even ask you to block the cookie prompts as well without having to go the adblock settings.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

There is also Vivaldi to consider.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 10 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 10 months ago

Whatever Brendan's personal views, he was a better CEO than Mozilla's current one... And I say that as a gay dude.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This is why federated FOSS solutions are the best.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Are there federated search engines?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago

I thought there was but I think I was thinking of searx.