Hell, Orion is the first Webkit browser where FireFox and Chrome plug-ins work on iOS. If may seem like a misstep, but I see it as calculated. If Kagi search hopes to ever take on Google and Chrome, they need their own champion.
You are both right. Freediver laid out the vision, and some users are saying the vision isn't what the paying users are paying for. As someone who ran a business like this, GS is telling Freediver this should probably be something to give extra attention to and consciously decide is it the company the vision or the search product people are paying for?
The vision of a company shouldn't be much of a concern to paying customers of an existing product.
I think therein lies the problem for many people. If you're already at a stretch to justify paying for search, any deviation from your assumption of the correct decisions from the company will be magnified.
I think the most positive aspect of freediver's response is the implied dismissal of the above. - that their stubborness is genuine, not a more robotic, seemingly hollow, response of concern. As a marketing approach, I'm wondering if maybe that would give you less reach and more impact in general.
I'm not even arguing people should assume good faith until proven otherwise (I don't think we should, generally). Just that being so steadfast in one's assumption of bad faith is unwarranted.
If this were an occasional occurrence, I would agree with you, but it seems to happen systematically. Perhaps it's an exaggerated and counterproductive way of reacting.
People have the right to hold different opinions without feeling compelled to try to convince others of their own views or to be persuaded by others' opinions. Accepting that people can have differing viewpoints demonstrates respect for diversity of opinion and individual freedom of thought.
The concept of accepting different opinions without trying to convince each other implies respect for intellectual autonomy and freedom of thought for each individual, while still encouraging open dialogue and constructive engagement __when appropriate__.
As a woman who’s had bad experiences with men before, this kind of “no you owe me your time” behaviour usually triggers a “get away from this guy; fast” kind of response.
This doesn’t mean Kagi is necessarily bad or that this was what Vlad intended, but it does for sure reduce my faith in the project. Not enough to stop paying for Kagi, but I’ve definitely gone to the “raise shields, power phasers” stage.
If this is a regular "trigger point" in real life, I can understand that as a knee jerk, but there's no danger or need for immediate reaction via email, so why judge through that lens once you've identified you're doing so?
I owned a business for 18 years. For 15 of those years it was my primary source of income. I valued feedback, tried my hardest to solicit as much of it as possible, and always took it to heart (though I had to always try and glean statistics from the sum of all feedback so that I was never spending resources on minority opinions).
What I read from the user was that the company created an optics problem. It wasn't whether the company was losing money or not, it was just that the user is choosing to support that company because they want a really good search engine, and the optics of divesting the company's resources into multiple projects makes it appear as if it could be the case that not enough focus is being spent on what really matters to that user.
What I read from the founder was that the optics issue went completely over his head and a complete dismissal of the user's concerns and feedback, along with a doubling down of the decisions made.
It's not a good look in my opinion. Even though the founder was polite and didn't say anything inappropriate, I would NEVER have responded to a customer of mine like that.