[axegon_]

I'd be more than willing to subscribe and support the project BUT, I need to address the elephant in the room: The reason why I'm against Kagi is the fact that they use Yandex(be it only for images according to their own words) and I'm sure as hell refusing to give a single cent to them. So I guess my question is: sources?

[SockThief]

> For web search, Uruky currently integrates Mojeek, Marginalia, EUSP (Ecosia/Qwant) (only works with French, German, or English), Linkup, Serper, and Uruky Site Search.

> For image search, Uruky currently integrates Pixabay and Serper (image results).

https://uruky.com/faq

[BrunoBernardino]

Thank you!

[specproc]

What's wrong with Yandex? I think every possible criticism of Yandex I can think of could just as easily be leveled at Google or Bing.

[NicuCalcea]

I also don't use Kagi because of Yandex, and my reason is that it's a Russian company, owned by people close to the Russian government.

[graemep]

Kagi seems unfairly picked on here. Lots of people do business with Russia. Multiple EU countries import gas from Russia which, the UK just dropped sanctions on Russian oil, lots of countries do not have sanctions on Russia at all so buying things from those countries might involve money ending up going to Russia.

On the other hand Kagi is an American company so is at the very least abiding by US sanctions.

[NicuCalcea]

I'm not claiming it's an infallible system and that no single cent of my money goes to Russia. I just do what's within my powers based on the information I have.

[graemep]

You cannot have an infallible system, but my point is that Kagi keeps getting highlighted, but no-one else seems to.

[NicuCalcea]

In my circles, Europe's (continuing) dependency on Russian fossil fuels is discussed often and at length. This being a tech forum, it's to be expected that conversations would revolve around tech products like Kagi. Off the top of my head, Russian connections are also brought up in relation to OnlyOffice and Telegram.

But I agree, we should be more vigilant about who and what our money supports.

[627467]

"I put ukraine flag in my social media profile"

[NicuCalcea]

Hell yeah, good for you.

[Yizahi]

It is maybe unconventional in a public discourse but I believe that it is completely fine for an individual human to "discriminate" anything multiple orders of magnitude more powerful, richer and more unaccountable to him/her than a human. For example - a billionaire, a corporation, a country, a block, an alliance, a military or mercenary unit and so on. Just because there are some other baddies around it is totally okay for an individual to boycott one of several selected baddies. Sure, it is a "discrimination" and it's fine. The power imbalance dictates that it is both ethical and logical thing to do.

It is especially logical to "discriminate" corporations which are not corrupt monopolies entwined with corrupt governments. Boycotting FAANG corpos is as pointless as it is impossible. The only reaction one may get from those is dead silence. Boycotting Kagi and publicly shaming them, may make them wake up and correct their misguided ways. For example, after years of nagging and shaming, DuckDuckGo has cut ties with Ruzzians. So that sometimes does work.

[specproc]

I loathe both Russian and American governments, what's a boy to do?

[NicuCalcea]

That is a tough position, I don't have a definitive answer. Perhaps you could look at supporting non-US and non-Russian companies building their own search indexes? Not sure what the state of Ecosia and Qwant's European Search Perspective is these days, but that's an option.

[TiredOfLife]

Murder and jaywalking.

[nerdyadventurer]

Why would anyone support US companies when they have been hoarding data for decades? things specially concerning at current state of the country.

[NicuCalcea]

I try to avoid US companies as well when possible, I just avoid Russian ones even more.

[tardedmeme]

Is that better or worse than Google?

[_diyar]

but surely you realize that people going to kagi also don’t like google or bing.

[carlosjobim]

There's little future in catering to customers who come to you only because they hate Google. They will soon find a reason to hate you and fill up your support forums and Discord with complaints. After all, they are spending the gigantic amount of $10 per month on your service, and have a right to influence the company.

With Uruky, these customers can now move on instead, and the lower price will serve as another reason. And then they also don't have to worry anymore that their accountant is going to call at 3AM and demand that they "justify" the gigantic subscription cost.

And Kagi can focus on the only real selling point they have: Search results quality. Which is where their future lies and what most potential customers are looking to pay for. Not being anti-Google.

[__jonas]

I think the point was that kagi uses google and bing as it’s search providers, besides others like yandex

[psychoslave]

What's wrong with Yandex? Is it quality of service being too low? Does the company have tracking records of shady practices, worst than what GAFAM are doing that make customer flee away?

[SyneRyder]

In my experience, Yandex was feeding in a lot of low quality results into Kagi - lots of pirated software, shady websites, proxy duplicate copycat sites, content that I'll euphemistically call "free speech". Kagi has a domain blacklist feature, but I was starting to fill up my blocklist - I think it's capped at 1000 domains, and many of these sites spin up new domains specifically to get around blocklists.

There's also the geopolitical issues, which I'll skip over because similar concerns can be leveled at other indexes too. I posted about that on the Kagi feedback forums back in 2024:

https://kagifeedback.org/d/4727-option-to-choose-or-exclude-...

I since built my own metasearch engine for my own use, where I choose the external indexes used, and I'm much happier. I started building a personal index of the web as well. I haven't used Kagi or Google for over a year now.

I hope I'm not distracting from Bruno's Uruky project here. Not everyone is technical enough to spin up some PHP code and make their own metasearch, or spin up a VPS and install a SearxNG instance. There's value in providing a good user experience for less technical users, in building resilience by using multiple indexes & building your own, and reducing dependencies on external index APIs that may cut off your access (coffgooglebingcoff). I'm glad services like Uruky exist.

[gunalx]

Main feature of urky seems to really be privacy. on my own searxNG i would be all the traffic. If I ho through urky hopefully I can hide with traffic from other users.

[wolvoleo]

It's Russian. Indirectly you are supporting Putin when you use it. Those sanctions aren't for no reason.

[TiredOfLife]

Kagi pays Yandex. So you are supporting directly

[wolvoleo]

Kagi -> Yandex -> Putin (through taxes), it's not really direct IMO

[neoromantique]

Yandex these days is pretty much directly Kremlin, so it's not "through taxes".

That being said Kagi -> Yandex hop does indeed make it indirect.

(I too have stopped using Kagi after I found out that they pay Yandex and employ people who support Russian war).

[cantalopes]

Wait what? They employ pro russian employees and use yandex?

[chadgpt3]

Am I indirectly supporting Trump when I use DuckDuckGo?

[dodslaser]

Yes, and a lot of EU citizens/companies are actively in the process of migrating away from US based software/products to EU alternatives for, among others, this exact reason.

[woadwarrior01]

Yes. You're also supporting Bing ads. With a thin veneer of privacy washing goodness, of course.

[carlosjobim]

I'll give you an introduction to Modern European Ethics™:

If you do something in this world and this life - remember you normally have about 70 years - there is always some detail of what you're doing that is worthy of criticism, shunning, and shaming. Since everything in the world is connected, you can't avoid it.

If however you do nothing in your life or with your life, then there is also nothing which you can be criticized for doing. And you can never be criticized for not doing something. When you die after a life toting the line and having the allowed opinion on every subject and shunning people who do things; then you go to European heaven - which is an eternity of committee meetings in Brüssels.

[wolvoleo]

It's not really a thing. We all know flying is a really bad thing and still the skies are full of planes also in Europe. It's just an extra factor to take into account. Like, when you can choose another solution that does not have this factor.

It's not about moral superiority, just about awareness of the choices we make. I have several friends that don't do the "Bali" summer holiday thing anymore even though they would like to and can afford it. Because Greece is also fun and wastes a lot of less fuel.

I like this better than the current American approach of: "We know it's bad for the environment so we will do it as much as possible to extract more profit than others before the world becomes uninhabitable. Then we will have WON!"

[axegon_]

^ Correct!

[sevg]

But is Yandex government owned? What about Russians abroad that send money back home to their families, and a percentage of that ends up going via taxes to Putin? Are we boycotting all Russians everywhere globally?

[distances]

All businesses based in Russia should be boycotted, also second-hand (so businesses that deal with other businesses based in Russia).

If I knew someone was sending money to Russia, I would of course avoid any contact (let alone financial ties) with them.

[Ray20]

> But is Yandex government owned?

In fact, yes. Yandex is totally controlled by Putin's presidential administration.

> What about Russians abroad that send money back home to their families

It doesn't seem like a significant factor. The main flow of money into Russia are payments for fossil fuel and trade balance with China.

[tumdum_]

Yes, we boycott anyone who supports Putin’s regime.

[sevg]

Hate to break it to you, but not all Russians support Putin.

[notpushkin]

I think the OP’s point still stands, but it is a fairly weak argument.

I am Russian and I do oppose Putin’s regime. My family is in Russia, though. If I send them money (which), and they pay for, say, groceries, which are taxed, some tiny part of my money will be used to fund the regime and the war. I am very disappointed but there is no way for me to just yank all my family and friends and relocate them to a less fucked-up jurisdiction.

Doing business with Yandex is a whole other beast. Kagi can choose to use a worse search engine API which doesn’t involve paying money to a Russian company. Are there some market forces at hand here? Maybe a lot of Russian expats pay for Kagi because it has good Russian-language results? I don’t know.

Edit:

> But is Yandex government owned?

It isn’t, but I really doubt it has no ties with it. It would be interesting to trace and see if Yandex Cloud’s international branch money gets back to its Russian counterpart, or if they are two separate things.