Comment by go88faxme
7 months ago
That is why I pay duckduckgo which include vpn. I also run my own searxng. I used to subscribe Kagi last year. But after researching I came to the same conclusion as Tomte. Nothing unusual. Just business. DDG already is Kagi with solid business and proven privacy (almost anyway, I know about their Microsoft connection). DDG interface need improvement though.
Just a small correction: I'm not the article's author, I don't really have a conclusion, and I don't see the mail exchange as quite so damning as most commenters here. Although you should really stop mailing when someone asks you to.
I was posting this mostly to get a sense what others think about this, since I have only heard good things about Kagi so far, and thought about subscribing last month (but didn't, yet).
DDG was certainly privacy oriented, but for various reasons in recent years I was not able to maintain conviction on the alignment of revenue sources / financial incentives with that mission. (It's still the one I set any time I help someone with their machine, unless they're willing to pay, then it's been kagi.)
The latest all-in-one privacy subscription may be a course correction to have more revenue directly from those who care about their own privacy, to better align the incentives.