Kagi is bringing back old school search, one man-made website at a time

If you are from At a certain age, you’ll remember the way the Internet used to be: websites created and developed by humans.

You can load a directory such as AltaVista or Yahoo and click on categories including Home, Family, Science, and Computers. In these lists you will find pages compiled by hobbyists, academics, and tech nerds.

People gather around forums and bulletin boards, and web developers tend to avoid putting images on their sites because it can slow down page loading. The idea of ​​watching a video online seemed almost impossible.

In the decades since those formative years, the Internet has been transformed almost beyond recognition. Almost everything is now monetized to the nth degree, from search results and forums to social media and news outlets. Powerful applications and tools now run inside browsers, while artificial intelligence is working hard to remove the need for the open web altogether.

There are now quite a few companies keen to see the return of the old web spirit, and Kagi is one of them. For several years, Kagi has been running a privacy and security-based search engine. Now Kagi has expanded its efforts beyond Google’s alternative search tool to curate a “small network” of sites run and written by humans.

Kaji search engine

Since Kagi’s main business is its search engine, it makes sense to start here. Searching with Kagi will cost you a small fee (starting at $5 per month, plus sales tax) for 300 searches. The standard-level AI Assistant is included in this price; This will help you understand what you are seeing. You can get unlimited searches and more AI Assistant tokens for $10 per month. If you want to see what Kagi looks like first before committing, there is a free trial available that allows you to perform 100 searches.

The argument Kagi makes for why we should pay for research is very compelling. As Kaji explains, searching the web will always cost you — it’s just a matter of whether you pay directly in dollars, by giving up data about your online activity, or by sifting through an increasing number of ads and sponsored links.

Besides making search more personal, Kagi also wants to improve it by offering results that aren’t influenced by paid promotions or any of Google’s preferred business practices from month to month. Kagi has its own web and news indexes, designed to promote “relevant, high-quality results” and non-commercial sites.

To start using Kagi Search, all you need is an email address and a password to manage your account. You can then start doing 100 free searches. Open the search options panel to limit results to photos, videos, podcasts, maps, or news, or to filter by time or language.

For me, it’s like going back in time. Searching for a band, for example, will bring up their official website, Wikipedia page, social media accounts, and YouTube channel — all devoid of promoted results, related searches, and sponsored content (such as concert tickets). It’s how search results appear.

Kagi’s little web project

Now there’s more to Kagi than just searching. The company provides access to several AI models (of course), and is busy building its own little web project, which aims to highlight the best of the human-made and human-regulated Internet. The company recently launched apps for Android and iOS as well.

The idea is to avoid a web “dominated by algorithms, ads, and AI-generated noise,” Kaji says. It’s a bit like the old StumbleUpon game, if you remember back then. there Next post A button to jump to something else at random, allowing you to favorite what you see or search for something specific. there Share Button too, of course.