this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2024
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Privacy
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It’s just a bit too expensive imo.
For something I use constantly every day $10 is nothing
but for something you never use $10 is quite a lot.
$5/mo. If that's too pricey deal with shit 🤷♂️.
Be nice, this isn't the app next door.
That's fair. Like the sibling comment says, it's worth it for me. But not everyone has the ability to pay.
The old saying goes: if you don't pay for the product, you are the product.
Yeah, still too expensive tho
Yeah, but $10 a month is a lot. And the $5 plan for only 300 searches a month goes by really fast if you have to do any kind of research for anything. Even for trying to figure out what brand of something to buy, you blow through those searches super quick.
Yup, I'd pay maybe $1. That's way more than the ad revenue search engines get, so it's a more than reasonable price to pay.
And where did you come up with this info? Source? Do you really think that search engine ad revenue (for the engine itself, not what one measly advertiser gets back) tops out at "way below" $1 per person?
In 2023, Google's ad search revenue amounted to 175 billion U.S. dollars.
That includes way more than search:
I couldn't find a reliable source for a breakdown, so I'll use Microsoft Bing statistics instead:
That last number is really close to my $1/month figure.
So something around $1/month range seems like a fair replacement for ad revenue for a search engine.
As you said, it's hard to calculate an exact number. But if you think your search results are only worth $1/month, that's up to you to determine. I know if I was an ad-broker or profiler, I'd pay more than $1/month/person as that's valuable information, in my opinion. And Kagi is worth much more than that to me. Proton theorizes:
Ref: https://proton.me/blog/what-is-your-data-worth
They've said that it costs them 1.5 cents to answer a search query, so that dollar a month wouldn't go very far. I probably incidentally run 40-50 searches a day between my devices... $10 is a value that works for me.
I've been using Kagi as my default since June, and don't plan on stopping anytime soon.
That sounds unlikely... But they're a small search provider with a small customer base, so costs will be high maintaining all the infrastructure needed.
As I linked elsewhere, Bing makes ~$10 per user per year. That's really close to my $1/month figure. And that's revenue, which doesn't count advertiser acquisition costs and whatnot.
I'm unwilling to pay $5/month for limited searches, but I'm willing to pay for search if it's reasonable.
That doesn't mean the price has to be the same as a fucking Netflix subscription.
Which service uses more computation? Streaming HQ video to millions of people, or running a search engine. Keep in mind, search engines have existed since basically before the internet in some form or another...
Well, it costs Kagi about 1.5 cents to answer a search query. Consider how many searches you use in a month to determine how much they're making off you at $10/mo.
I'm lucky enough to be in a position to be able to pay for products that I use, instead of relying on freemium, or ad-supported, or data-mined, or pirated products. That hasn't always been the case for me, so I don't judge anyone for making a different choice.
If they're taking in less than 1000 searches of money for 3000 searches, the numbers still aren't adding up. Someone is misinformed or the product still.