Comment by lolinder
7 months ago
The T-shirt thing is dumb and a waste of funds, but TFA describing it as "owning" a T-shirt factory is an exaggeration that makes me question most of the framing of the rest of the article. They partnered with an existing entity in Serbia, what they did set up was the means to distribute them. Still not a great look and definitely still a waste of funds, but if every criticism takes this same form—take a legitimate criticism and blow it out of proportion with exaggerated language—then it's important to take the article with plenty of salt.
My own experience has been that what I get month to month is worth what I pay. If the project is sustainable, then I'll get to enjoy it into the future. If not, I'll get to enjoy it while I can.
A search engine isn't like an email provider or even a web browser, there's basically no lock in that makes transitioning later difficult if something changes for the worse.
> If not, I'll get to enjoy it while I can.
Sure, but what happens with your information after that is also very important. What's for me very concerning after reading the article is not a T-Shirt factory or burning budget, but the their attitude towards privacy.
For my part, I trust that they aren't logging my searches and I don't put any sensitive information into the fields that are persistent. If someone eventually buys Kagi then they'll be able to learn that I block Pinterest and boost MDN, which is way less information than Google collects and stores about me, and it's information I'm happy to divulge to get the service I want.
> I trust that they aren't logging my searches
I did trust that, before reading this article. The founder's attitude toward privacy -- based on what he's said in the Discord -- worries me, and some of that trust has been eroded.
Yeah most of the stuff like AI doesn't concern me. It's a good product so I pay for it.
Personally I think the t-shirts look great and I'd love one.
The only thing that concerned me in that article was the disregard and / or misunderstanding of GDPR.
It's so silly. Google/Bing are wasting money too but the difference is you don't see it. And yes, we're "paying" to use those services too, just not with our own money.