I've never understood what niche Orion is supposed to fill. People who value privacy would be more likely to use an open-source browser. Firefox and Brave already serve that purpose. Maybe it's less important to Mac users, but on Linux, a proprietary browser is a major deal-breaker for most people. Plus, it's less convenient if the browser isn't simply included in the repository as a result. Orion should have been developed as open source from the start, with community involvement. Kagi can still benefit from this, though, by serving as the default search engine in exchange for funding the development, and by having the Kagi Assistant directly integrated into the platform.
Anecdotally, the niche it solved for me for a while was "Safari for optimal performance on mac, but with proper extensions like ublock".
I used it regularly for almost a year, eventually got off because of some UI bugs that came up and because the Safari dev tools feel so clunky/need relearning compared to Chrome & FF.
Like others in this thread I’ve questioned why Kagi is developing a browser. My only guess is they at one point thought there would be some opportunities in integrating AI stuff and a browser. Because their CEO has said in the past that they are convinced of LLM usefulness but in a specific way.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see some agentic features in their browser at some point. Their assistant tool is already quite good - it has replaced search for me in a number of scenarios.
I found the move to release Orion on Linux and windows weird.
If you were Google and you wanted to spread your search engine to the world, it would be fine but such a small company. And the market share would still have been abysmal on the platforms.
Great thing that they release it before abandoning it, truely a great move !
And hopefully they keep making it better on macOS and iOS.
> If you were Google and you wanted to spread your search engine to the world, it would be fine but such a small company.
I've done successful, safe cross-platform development at several small companies and it goes just fine. But you do need capable hands at it and some developers really worked their best to sabotage the work platforms due to sheer laziness.
Size of company is irrelevant, not hiring fanboys is the most important part at this process. I wonder how Kagi managed to fail at that.
Maybe it is for better. I used Orion as my main browser for awhile on iOS, but then it started getting weird bugs. Now I have both Safari and Firefox open all the time and watch yt on Brave.
I try to see if they got Orion to behave again, but find a bit difficult to trust it as the main browser.
Sad that the other two platforms won't have the same stewardship as Orion on macOS. Especially since we're likely to see drift from the core WebKit implementation between them now.
I don't understand the decision to open source the Linux and Windows ports, but not the MacOS version. They should have moved their Orion development into the open, and said we're not going to support Linux and Windows going forward. Then someone else could have picked up the task of keeping the Linux and Windows forks in sync with their MacOS work.
I don't understand the reasoning behind Kagi developing a browser. Such a small team would gain more from partnering with the likes of Mozilla/Vivaldi/etc IMO
I used it regularly for almost a year, eventually got off because of some UI bugs that came up and because the Safari dev tools feel so clunky/need relearning compared to Chrome & FF.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see some agentic features in their browser at some point. Their assistant tool is already quite good - it has replaced search for me in a number of scenarios.
Yes, it's good, and I'll keep using it for the foreseeable future, but it's not an unassailable lead.
If you were Google and you wanted to spread your search engine to the world, it would be fine but such a small company. And the market share would still have been abysmal on the platforms.
Great thing that they release it before abandoning it, truely a great move !
And hopefully they keep making it better on macOS and iOS.
I've done successful, safe cross-platform development at several small companies and it goes just fine. But you do need capable hands at it and some developers really worked their best to sabotage the work platforms due to sheer laziness.
Size of company is irrelevant, not hiring fanboys is the most important part at this process. I wonder how Kagi managed to fail at that.
I try to see if they got Orion to behave again, but find a bit difficult to trust it as the main browser.