An Update on Orion for Linux and Windows(blog.kagi.com) |
An Update on Orion for Linux and Windows(blog.kagi.com) |
I used it regularly for almost a year, eventually got off because of some UI bugs that came up and because the Safari dev tools feel so clunky/need relearning compared to Chrome & FF.
In other words, as you say, exactly.
I have no idea if it's a good or bad or I'd like it or not. I never even considered trying. I don't mind that it exists. I don't think kagi are doing anything bad with it. But I also just have no interest in even trying it. Presumably it's good for soneone but for me (a paying kagi customer linux user) it's almost like it's invisible. A probably benign, utterly uninteresting thing.
I don't use any of their AI features either. I hope they cost extra seperately so that I'm not paying for that stuff I'm not using but I suspect I probably am.
Yes, it's good, and I'll keep using it for the foreseeable future, but it's not an unassailable lead.
We dont need ad blockers. We need advertiserproof/trackingproof browsers. Like we have waterproof shoes and coats and hats. We could also use some nicer browsers in terms of features.
But what folks who really care about these details should do is simply de-apple, and de-google (and obviously de-windows!). That will get you much further than using a particular browser, but a good browser helps.
My subscription is up for renewal in December and I think I actually have a decision to make. For now I'm very happy with the Kagi MCP for my research agent. But I'm definitely having a moment of "how reliant should I really be on this company?"
If you try it out, you'll either find a replacement that saves you money, or you'll at least have the makings of an escape plan if you need it later. You'll also have your own comparison data for where Kagi beats a generic metasearch, and if that difference is meaningful for you.
Bad call, because it's genuinely too hard for someone the size of Kagi, as they've discovered.
There's room for a Chromium fork that has a better reputation than Brave. (I use Brave, and it's great, but I realise many people don't want to use it.)
We need more rendering engines out there in the wild, as the situation with chrome's monopoly is already critically dire.
Mozilla have more momentum, experience, and funding, but still struggle.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see some agentic features in their browser at some point. Their assistant tool is already quite good - it has replaced search for me in a number of scenarios.
I ended up staying because the Adblock is good (search remains good). The browser is fine. It does have bugs and needs to be hard closed occasionally.
I agree on the assistant. It is very capable. I use the Kagi mcp with coding agents and I like the results, but they have done something with their assistant that makes it even more useful.
I try to see if they got Orion to behave again, but find a bit difficult to trust it as the main browser.
If you were Google and you wanted to spread your search engine to the world, it would be fine but such a small company. And the market share would still have been abysmal on the platforms.
Great thing that they release it before abandoning it, truely a great move !
And hopefully they keep making it better on macOS and iOS.
I've done successful, safe cross-platform development at several small companies and it goes just fine. But you do need capable hands at it and some developers really worked their best to sabotage the work platforms due to sheer laziness.
Size of company is irrelevant, not hiring fanboys is the most important part at this process. I wonder how Kagi managed to fail at that.