Yes, Yandex, they pay them for some of their search results. Here is their own statement, where they refuse to stop, even though people keep asking them: https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integratio...

"people", as in a perpetually offended tiny minority that want the entire world to bend to their comfort bubble. I'm fairly certain you're also one of the users that incessantly badgered them about excluding Brave's index, trying to portray it like the majority of Kagi users wanted that.

Vlad's stance is very refreshing in the current politically correct world: if including an index makes for better search results (= a better product for the users), it will be included.

'Offended' is a weird word to describe people choosing to boycott evil.

Yandex is evil?

The Russian government is evil. Would you describe every person within its borders as evil? Every company?

Besides, if you spent some time on the kagifeedback forums you'd know that there is a particular brand of weird user there that wants to force Kagi to exclude or rejigger certain search results to be (effectively) more woke, which falls pretty much under the same umbrella as excluding whole indexes.

With Kagi you get the results as-is, and you get to personally ignore, downrank or block any of them you don't like. Much better than having a minority of users force all of us into their bubble.

Boycott particular examples of evil that they disagree with politically.

I am curious about your politics that favor the invasion of Ukraine.

I’m curious about your politics that are comfortable accepting a long list of invasions by the US, but somehow draw the line when it comes to this particular invasion.

I’m not saying it’s good to favour invasive countries, I’m just saying this is hypocritical. I have no particular love for either the US or Russia.

Can you describe my beliefs on US foreign policy in more detail?

Then get your ass off of the internet because there as so many commercial entities profiting off of every bit of your use.

Joke's on them, I'm using private browsing mode. Hackerman

“Private” browsing mode is a misleading name. It only protects you from other people looking at your search history, not from online tracking.

Was hoping the hackerman thing was a dead giveaway.

You sound really mad that people would criticize Russia.

I mean by all means, stick with Google and its ever-declining search quality and ever-expanding monopoly power while it builds AI tools for Israel to automate the slaughter of civilians, instead of a search engine startup that... has some minor partnership with another search engine that is located in a country where you don't like its government?

You know a lot about what I'm doing.

> Is Yandex an arm of Russian intelligence? Any more than Google and Bing are arms of US surveillance?

Yes.

Russia is a dictatorship at war with Ukraine and the West by their own statements and actions. The idea they are leveraging tech companies for this purpose is ludicrous.

Is Yandex == Russia? Is West == unquestionably good? Do you have the same stance on Israel?

Yandex is the Russian government, yes. It didn't used to be but it is now.

https://www.zois-berlin.de/en/publications/zois-spotlight/th...