Comment by lurking_swe

Comment by lurking_swe 6 days ago

6 replies

love the plan, but i’d suggest being more up front with users on how “finished” a product is.

With the maps example, you run into problems because of expectations. If you slap a BETA or ALPHA logo on the maps product, expectations will be lower, and people are more forgiving of issues while you continue improving the product. Or if it’s only good in the US (just an example), make it clear somehow when searching for addresses outside the US.

Just my 2 cents as a paying Kagi customer.

freediver 6 days ago

Interestingly we do not get a lot of bug reports for Maps on our feedback forum. And this is where we tend to go to look for problems to fix.

  • esperent 6 days ago

    As a paid kagi user, that might be because I tried kagi maps once, went "yep that's crap" and from then on went to Google for any maps related search.

    However, I neither expect nor need kagi to have a perfect replacement for every single google product. I'd rather it focus on creating better versions of the things that google is bad at (especially basic search) rather than trying to provide bad versions of the things Google is good at (maps, translate).

  • laserbeam 6 days ago

    As a kagi early adopter… why would I bug report on a feature I actively avoid using?

    I can totally recommend search to anyone, but I agree with others in this chat that most toys feel beta. I’m glad to have them but can’t recommend them.

    For maps, your goals of being ad free go against what I need from maps search. 90% of the time I search for restaurants, museums, businesses, opening hours, phone numbers of various local shops. People add that data to google, and not that many other maps services :(. That is where they advertise how to be contacted. Addresses and directions are really secondary to a maps search.

  • carlosjobim 6 days ago

    Like others here are saying, Kagi maps is so far behind that I wouldn't bother with any bug reports or feedback. I tried it just now, was panning around in a region in Europe, clicked the "Hotels" button to see what it would present and get sent to a town called Hotels in Palestina with a Wikipedia description of what a hotel is...

    So the suggestion to slap a beta sticker over maps is a good one. Nokia, Microsoft and Apple have all tried to compete with Google Maps without succeeding. Do yourself a favour and start using the Google Maps API for Kagi Maps, that's probably the only way you can get all the important data. If the API is expensive, then charge more for maps. Kagi customers want the best product, and are willing to pay for it.

  • Martinussen 6 days ago

    As an anecdatapoint, I have replaced the button with a redirect to Google maps. It's not worth trying to extract value from the Kagi one, I probably gave it a chance ~20 times and I don't think it did what I needed a single one. (In Scandinavia)

  • dgacmu 6 days ago

    As a paying Kagi user, in my case, that's because I !g any query that I expect to give local results for, and I often go directly to maps.google.com for map results. The general search results are awesome, particularly in my tech bubble, since I don't have to see w3schools garbage and the like. Localized stuff, not so great, and maps I prefer to avoid.

    (Edited to add: Though perhaps I should give maps a try again. They seem to have gotten better since I formed my muscle memory.)