I recently trialed Kagi as a paid, replacement search engine for DDG and Google. It’s fairly good at reducing the amount of SEO-crammed results in the first page but I began to question whether or not to continue using it due to concerns in the community regarding their ethics and moral duties.

A part of Kagi’s mission is to make the web more ethical. But I feel that some of their actions go against this mission and I ultimately cannot continue supporting Kagi in good conscience.

Support of Russian services

A portion of your fee goes towards Yandex, indirectly funding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Vlad, the CEO, has stated that 2% of their total costs in 2024 goes towards Yandex. He has also stated that there is no intent of changing this.

Is it ethical to continue funding a large Russian-based company knowing full well it goes towards killing innocent lives?

At least other search engines like DuckDuckGo have halted their partnerships with Yandex. Kagi’s refusal to do so and Vlad’s firm support of Yandex is quite telling. If others have ceased partnering with Yandex, why can’t Vlad?

It’s worth mentioning that Kagi previously listed the sources they used in their search. It seems that they’ve now hidden that information on that page, seemingly contradictory to their “commitment to transparency.”

Inclusion of xAI’s Grok

A portion of your fee goes towards Elon Musk’s xAI, of X/Twitter, to support Grok in their AI assistant. Indeed, you can simply not use this assistant, however all paying users are effectively subsidizing the cost of the Grok API calls. There is no way to opt-out of this.

Is it ethical to help finance a company which consistently promotes division among the population, the spread of disinformation, and hate speech? Is it ethical to give money to a company that continually platforms white supremacists?

Kagi currently recommends eight LLMs, including Grok. There are plenty of LLMs to choose from, yet Kagi continues to include Grok despite pushback from the community. Why is that?

* * *

I don’t believe Kagi is upholding their mission of making the web more ethical. No matter the ethical framework here, the firm financial support of Russian services and X/Twitter is ultimately harming society as a whole and creating a more-fractured, divided world. It’s odd that Kagi dismisses these valid concerns, noting that they’re more focused on providing a better search, etc. But if they strive to be an ethical company, would that not take precedence over search result quality?

It goes without saying that none of us are perfect. No company is perfect. But, much like how Kagi can choose which heinous companies to partner with—you and I too can choose which companies to support. The ethical choice is simply cancelling my Kagi membership.

As an aside, I do wonder when, not if, the larger, less obvious cracks will show in the company. When will Kagi change their mission and remove their own “don’t be evil?”

 

PS: There are some other posts that I would recommend: