Vlad Prelovac on Kagi Search and Orion
Kagi founder and CEO Vlad Prelovac joins the show to talk about the business of web search, the thinking behind Kagi’s own amazing search engine, and their upstart WebKit-based browser Orion.
Here are some highlights from what I thought was a very interesting conversation:
Microsoft tried that with Bing and they spent 20 years, I think 100 billion is what I read and had thousands of the smartest people working on it and we all know what Bing results are like[…] So it’s really impossible for a small startup to compete with that nor I think we should. I think we should instead focus on providing the different business model.
The search index is one of those things that the DOJ suggested in their proposal to be open basically and just to prevent what I just described and also help proliferate startups that will offer different experiences.
[…]
We use five or six major search engines so everything that exists in the world and another advantage of doing that although it costs more money is basically we ensure that if it doesn’t surface on Kagi it probably doesn’t exist anywhere which is what you describe.
[…]
So Google has an offer that is basically a franchise and you have ability to get Google searches out but you also have to get Google ads so it’s one package and we have been trying for years to sort of license Google results in a way that we don’t get the ads so what we currently do is there are services out there that basically resell Google results that we use because we cannot directly retry but Google is not ready to do that and this is what the DOJ trial I think is very important for.
[…]
Safari to me, as far as I know, stands alone amongst popular browsers for not allowing the user to easily add their own, default search engine choices.
[…]
But all of those companies have traffic acquisition cost arrangements with Google. That’s how they get on that list in Safari.
Neither of them thinks that divesting Google of Chrome would solve anything.
Previously:
- Apple to Defend Google Revenue Sharing Agreement
- DOJ Wants Google to Sell Chrome and De-Google Android
- Google Search and Ads Monopoly
- Only Google Can Crawl Reddit
- Google’s AI Search and “Web” View
- Google Search Changes Hurt Independent Sites
- Cue Testimony in US v. Google
- Google Changes Search Queries to Show More Ads
- Kagi Small Web
- Brave Search No Longer Using Bing
- Kagi Search and Orion Browser Public Betas
- Google Search Is Dying
- Web Search Indexes and Ecosia in Safari
8 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
I use and like Kagi and I am rooting for Orion but unlike the OmniWeb of old compared to the Safari of its day, I am not sure what I get from Orion that I don’t get from Safari + 1Blocker. Also I don’t believe that Orion can use iCloud Private Relay.
> But all of those companies have traffic acquisition cost arrangements with Google. That’s how they get on that list in Safari.
What does this mean? Do Bing and Ecosia / etc. pay Google somehow to be on Apple’s list?
> I am not sure what I get from Orion that I don’t get from Safari + 1Blocker.
Vertical tabs is a huge selling point for me. I like that cookies and fonts can be blocked natively and the config easily changed per website. Has a few other nice features.
Safari overall has a better experience imo. Sometimes I use one than the other. Keep in mind, Orion is still in beta. There is really great potential here. And I’m really happy they’re using WebKit.
@Jules Yes, all the search engines pay Apple a portion of their advertising revenue. So he says that Safari is actually an ad-supported browser, too.
> I am not sure what I get from Orion that I don’t get from Safari + 1Blocker
For those of us who want to modify our browser's behavior extensively, having proper browser extensions is a must. Safari simply does not have proper browser extensions, mainly because you have to distribute your them through the scourge that is the Mac app store. And without what extensions it does have, Safari can scarcely be configured or customized. In all of these senses it is truly Apple's web browser.
I appreciate that Orion aims to be fully compatible with both Firefox and Chrome extensions, which means there'll be tons of ways to customize it. Last I used it, though, many extensions still didn't work properly. It'll probably take them a long while to reach that goal.
> I am not sure what I get from Orion that I don’t get from Safari + 1Blocker
The built-in blocker seems at least as good as 1Blocker and unlock origin is quite a bit better.
You can have a mix of extension from Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. (It mostly works.) For example you can have noir from Safari and ublock origin (for Firefox) from the curated extensions list and StopTheMadness Pro via the Chrome extension bundled within its app.
Much more tweakability including browser spoofing to get around BS “you need chrome” sites that actually work fine with WebKit. There are a lot of options beyond vertical tabs including a preview browser popover option thing; an option to automatically enter picture-in-picture when navigating to another tab.
I gave Orion a try a few months ago and there were some bug annoyances that sent me back to Safari. I’m giving it another partially because 1Blocker has some issues for me and I do use Kagi and the extension in Safari to make it work is kind of annoying.
> I am not sure what I get from Orion that I don’t get from Safari + 1Blocker.
Compared to Safari, there are privacy extensions such as LocalCDN, SkipRedirect and LibRedirect. Recently, Safari extensions such as StoptheMadness or 1Blocker work as well.
I have the impression that Orion has better memory management. Pages that I don't use for a while are marked with a moon symbol. This is noticeable in the activity manager as low memory consumption.
