Privacy

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Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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Google's new AI search results promotes sites pushing malware, scams (www.bleepingcomputer.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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(In the case that someone in Lemmy still use Google)

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] FutileRecipe 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

maybe $1. That's way more than the ad revenue search engines get

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Google's ad search revenue amounted to 175 billion

That includes way more than search:

That “search and other” figure includes revenue generated on Google’s search properties, along with ads on other Google-owned properties like Gmail, Maps and the Google Play app store.

I couldn't find a reliable source for a breakdown, so I'll use Microsoft Bing statistics instead:

$12.2B ad revenue in 2023
~1.3 billion unique visitors globally as of March 2023
$9.66 Bing revenue per user

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.

[–] FutileRecipe 1 points 7 months ago

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:

If Google Search market share is also 90% in the US, that’s over 274 million people using Google, and the company earns $393 per year from each of them.

Ref: https://proton.me/blog/what-is-your-data-worth

[–] [email protected] -1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

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.