Long story short, this appears to be a case of a CEO needing to restrain themselves from saying (or typing) everything that comes to mind when faced with a combative user who clearly isn't trying to understand something or bring anything to the table.
At the end of the day, what you care about when it comes to privacy in search are your search records. They say--in a way that generates liablity--that they don't store them. I see no reason for them to break that promise. Between a commercial VPN and Kagi, I trust Kagi more.
It might appear like that from a corporate PR perspective, but from the perspective of a user that's just one of those rare cases where you get a glimpse of honesty, which is just (if not more) as valid as some undefined liability to be the ground for you assessment
> from the perspective of a user that's just one of those rare cases where you get a glimpse of honesty
User asked for data download. Company said there isn't any. User said that isn't GDPR compliant, which is nonsense. Company gave correct, snotty response.
I get it. I've been pissed off at companies before, too, and basically engaged in a support conversation to get something ambiguous in writing that I could use to cost them time and money in New York, California, Texas or the EU. (Big regulatory organiations, some of which love fodder with which to justify their existence.)
User was going down a rabbit hole. Kagi followed them there. They shouldn't have responded to that thread after it went into territory that on HN would have been flagged and in real life been settled with a glare.
Tangent to that, I hadn't realised their Orion browser was mac only, which is a flag of some colour to me. A company that takes privacy seriously ought to be taking Linux or cross platform seriously and if they do not I assume they do not.
Offering another perspective: A company that takes privacy seriously creates their web browser as a zero telemetry and with 'pay for your browser' business model so there is no incentive whatsoever to mine user data (Orion is both of these, and unique in the browser world as such).
And a company that is 100% supported by user funding (which Kagi is) can only do so much with resources available, which is the reason we have to pick our battles (read more about Windows/Linux/Android versions for Orion https://orionfeedback.org/d/2321-orion-for-windows-android-l... ) People often criticize us for doing too much (eg link in the parent of parent comment) but we also at the same time do get critique that we are doing too little :) If Kagi is not doing something, believe me, it is not for the lack of will or ambition. (Kagi CEO here)
> company that takes privacy seriously ought to be taking Linux or cross platform seriously
Going out on a limb, but guessing that the chief hurdle a company like Kagi faces is willingness to pay. I'm going to guess the 'this is a great product, but I just can't bring myself to pay more than 20¢ per year for search' crowd is crowded in Linux. (I may be totally wrong on this!)
A user asking for the state of GDPR conformance is not by any means a "combative" user. They just want to know if their personal information a treated in their best interest and according to current laws.
Privacy is a VPNs first business, for kagi that would be search. It feels like you mix your evangelism with a bit of whataboutism here... why do you bring up VPN providers when we talk about the privacy guarantees of kagi?
Long story short, this appears to be a case of a CEO needing to restrain themselves from saying (or typing) everything that comes to mind when faced with a combative user who clearly isn't trying to understand something or bring anything to the table.
At the end of the day, what you care about when it comes to privacy in search are your search records. They say--in a way that generates liablity--that they don't store them. I see no reason for them to break that promise. Between a commercial VPN and Kagi, I trust Kagi more.
[1] https://d-shoot.net/kagi.html