Kagi is intended to be a paid service when it launches. This is something I actively want. It should make them the opposite of user-hostile. Their users will be the source of their revenue so they will need to provide value or lose them. Login is a necessary part of that. I'm happy to take both that inconvenience and the cost.

And as of now, they are listening to users very attentively. Just a few hours ago I suggested they clarify the defualt "Programming" filter since it only searches q&a sites (i.e Stack Overflow) and they have already changed the name to "Programming Help" to make it more clear.

I used it for awhile and did like it quite a bit - I found myself having a bit of anxiety though worrying if I was going to hit the search limit with my more trivial queries. Google really has us psychologically

Is there a search limit for Kagi during beta? I don't see it documented anywhere, and I've been using it as my primary search engine for a few months and haven't seen any sign of a limit.

I wouldn't be surprised if there's some limit to prevent abuse, but it hardly gets in the way of my normal usage.

According to a discussion I had here previously with a Kagi user, when they go out of beta they plan to offer a $10/month plan with a quota of 20 searches per day (and $0.015 per each additional search), and an unlimited plan for $20-30/month. Additionally, every time you change something related to your search query (such as clicking "Images", changing the sort order, applying filters, or blocking a website) counts as an additional search, so you could go through your quota pretty fast.

Apparently all of this is to offset the costs from paying Google and Bing to run searches for them (the site basically takes results from Google and Bing and then combines them together with their own special sauce) but with a pricing model like this it seems like Kagi will remain a niche tool solely used by the wealthy.

Hm, 30 USD/month for good search is not that much - and certainly not "wealthy" territory. Remember that many people pay subscription services they use a lot less (18 USD for Netflix, anyone?).

The main paradigm shift necessary will be to pay at all for something that was "free" and is provided "free" to this day - even if the quality is worse.

Monthly subscription and quotas? While I respect and understand the goal I can’t help but feel like we are paywalling what the web has been for the longest time and should be “out of the box”.

Hostile is such a drastic word to apply to a service that is dedicated to making search better by actually listening to the desires of their users.

They need to support their efforts somehow. Instead of showing ads or selling your data, they are going to charge a fee to use it.

Google uses ads to pay for the service, which is available without logging in. Those ad systems can track you. On the other hand, a paid service (even if it is currently in "free" mode) will likely get rid of ads, but requires some authentication to know you are you.

I'm logged into Google all the time. I do this to get sharing working across Chrome. Others doe the same with Firefox. Some don't, because privacy.

I hear you think logins are 1000x more hostile than paying with your eyeballs. How would you suggest resolving this clearly conflicted view with logging in vs. how the revenue is made on a given site?

It used to be that if you used a paid service, then that service wouldn't throw you to the wolves of internet marketing/tracking companies. That alone made logins 1000 times less hostile.

But that is changing. Internet marketing companies are now teaming up with websites so the websites to their dirty work for them and you end up getting tracked anyway -- but with much higher certainty as to who you are. That means that now, yes, logins are more hostile.

The web continues to get smaller and smaller.

And they also intend to charge $10 per month (and that's just for 20 searches per day, which is a WTF low number). There's no way I'm paying that kind of money.