08-16, 13:00–13:50 (US/Eastern), Little Theatre
You know the drill: search for official travel info, get an overcharging third-party site. Look for a hotel, get a misleading aggregator. “Free” search costs you time, money, and trust. Kagi is the revolt - a paid, obsessively user-centric search engine architected to serve you, not the advertisers. This session reveals how Kagi sidesteps the surveillance model, leveraging diverse sources and AI tools (under your control) to deliver clean, customizable results. Founder Vlad Prelovac will detail the tech choices enabling genuine user agency (blocking SEO garbage, elevating trusted sources via filters), the challenge of building viable alternatives outside the ad-tech ecosystem, and the fight to restore user agency against data-hoarding monopolies. If you’re tired of being the product on the web, join the resistance.
Vladimir Prelovac is the CEO of Kagi. Originally from Yugoslavia, he believes technology should advance humanity, not just ad-clicks. He is inspired by visionary builders and dismayed by the focus of mainstream tech, which he believes insults user intelligence. As a lifelong builder whose roots trace back to creating MUDs, he now builds Kagi and Orion to provide concrete, user-funded alternatives: search without ads or tracking, and tools that put users back in control, directly rejecting the surveillance model. His interests include strategic gaming and endurance sports.
