Web tracking and ads are becoming a personal and societal problem. Browsing and searching the web sensibly has become all but impossible. In response, today we are launching the public beta of two essential tools that allow you to fight back and make the web more humane for you and your family.
Ads dominate the entire web. Advertisers target you every living moment of your day making your web interactions a “dodge the ad” exercise. It’s also bad because advertisers know you, your location, and your habits and they use, sell and trade this information at a startling scale, without your permission [1].
The web services people use most (search, browser, email, messaging, entertainment, etc..) are almost exclusively built on ad-driven models that strip users of basic privacy and decency on the web. Not to mention social media which turned into a huge ad-supported tracking industry. In addition, the user experience is confusing to the user as the content that the user wants is interspaced with ads that seem to dominate the page. In a typical search screen on the desktop, over 30% of the space on the page is dominated by ads. On the mobile phone, the experience is even worse, there are no actual results above the fold usually.
Users are beginning to rebel against this model by using ad-blockers with the browsers (over 760 million devices have ad blockers installed [2]). More and more people are willing to pay for ad-free services (50 million pay for YouTube Premium [3], over 100 million Netflix users…). The ad-driven model spawns bad user experiences, deep tracking, and security holes for the users. This is especially pernicious with young kids, who are using these services with no controls.
At Kagi, we are saying enough with this nonsense.
browser.kagi.com
kagi.com
. It seems promising though.
