(In the case that someone in Lemmy still use Google)
The old saying goes: if you don’t pay for the product, you are the product.
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.
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.
