To all those calling this bizarre - I agree, BUT I also think Kagi is in the perfect position to do weird stuff like this. Their products are high impact but, to be blunt, easy to ditch. If the company gets too weird for me I can just effortlessly use a different search engine / browser. So, I encourage them to try weird stuff while they are small and have a small footprint. I love the idea that a company is doing stuff like this.

I would love to record everything I see (assuming perfect solutions around video security and storage, another topic), not because I’m a creep and want to watch the videos, but because it acts as a personal dash cam.

Also was hoping to see more of the structural elements… that drawing really makes it feel like the entire thing is made of cardboard, hopes and dreams.

For some reason, the idea that RTO is caused by out of touch execs is pervasive, but I really don’t think that’s the reason. These companies need people to leave. The cheapest way to do that is for an employee to leave voluntarily after they have gotten another job. Hell, if enough people leave, you might not even have to do layoffs.

We can bitch about it all we want, but these execs know what they’re doing. They aren’t stupid or out of touch.

EDIT: I will add that I’m also curious about the long-term implications of this kind of trickery. It doesn’t seem like a good long-term solution, you can’t just order RTO and then allow remote work year after year. Everyone is going to have to find something that works long-term eventually.

It's interesting though - what is Apple's vested interest in only having native support for certain search engines? I now no longer use their browser because of this - I would think that is _some_ kind of loss for them. Maybe not, since I'm on macOS anyway.

The people that don't enjoy coding can still force themselves to do it... But they will find it lack luster. They are doing something they don't like, aren't too good at, for less money, at a job that took forever to find, etc etc. They won't have the same experience.

There are enough people that enjoy coding to tell everyone else "yeah this fucking rocks", and that certainly draws people in, but a lot of people will be disappointed with it.

The product the OP is talking about made quite a buzz in the business when it was first released (I do think it came out for a while). It was a price comparison tool, and the reason it failed was because it was hard to get the big brand names on board. The big brand names didn’t want to compete on price alone, because they spent so much money on their brand. They already had a ton of customers coming straight to their website.

Sorry for any formatting or spelling issues here, I’m using voice to text.