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If the current ad model of the popular search engine(s) was made extinct by law. I would be extremely surprised if search simply disappeared rather than move to

If the current ad model of the popular search engine(s) was made extinct by law. I would be extremely surprised if search simply disappeared rather than move to a paid model. Who wouldn't pay to have any information in the world reachable in the 30 seconds it takes to craft a query and scan the first page of results? It is a huge competitive advantage.

kspacewalk2 7y ago
My guess is that the vast majority of people wouldn't pay. Firstly, because it's notoriously difficult to get people to pay for something that used to be free. Lack of tracking and respect for privacy is not something most people would recognize as an obvious upgrade - hence the need for legislation in the first place. So the public will see it as paying for the exact thing that used to be free, and just won't do it. If Google won't find a loophole to bring marketing, paid results or some other monetization back in such a legislative environment, someone else will. You'll end up with something that's won't necessarily be better for consumers than the advertising model.
yoz-y 7y ago
Nobody ever paid for something like that. If there is anything on the internet people assume it should be free. Taking example of the HN crowd, every time there is a pay walled article people ask for web links, praise outline links and generally complain.
- majewsky 7y ago
  This is because there are free alternatives. When 99% of the articles on the frontpage are freely accessible, it feels "wrong" to find an article that requires you to cough up money first, especially when it does not hold up to the insane quality level implied by that price difference. If there were no free search engines, I can see people paying a few bucks a month for Google. Even more so if Google would then again make their results as useful to users as they once were. A practical example: I'm incredibly price-sensitive wrt productivity applications because there are many great such applications available as open source. I'm much less price-sensitive when it comes to video games (e.g. I spent 300€ on Breath of the Wild since it required buying a Switch) because the selection of open source video games is very limited.
- e_proxus 7y ago
  I would gladly pay, say $2-8 a month, for a search engine that actually delivered good results. Nowadays it's just SEO garbage and blog spam. Try searching for product reviews for example. It's almost impossible to find good, honest review sites via a search engine (they definitely exist though). Most are shopping sites or fake reviews that just list scraped product information.
- wpietri 7y ago
  > Nobody ever paid for something like that. Sure, because the web was ad-funded from the early days. People have an irrationally strong preference for "free". Even though in this case "free" really means "paid for by people manipulating how you spend your money". But I think it's implausible that if ads didn't happen the web would just be an empty wasteland. Up until the web existed, people paid for all sorts of information and informational services. And plenty of people still do. I spend maybe $1k/year on journalism.
dwild 7y ago
> I would be extremely surprised if search simply disappeared rather than move to a paid model. Sure, but that would be available to the ones that can profit from it directly, not the mass population that would have an hard time seeing value created from it. Instead they would expect word of mouth to be sufficent, and in a way they wouldn't be wrong in that world because in that world everything would depends from it. They just wouldn't have the luxury of having all theses others experience that depends on ads to exist, simply because ads wouldn't be there to allow them to exist.

kspacewalk2 7y ago

My guess is that the vast majority of people wouldn't pay. Firstly, because it's notoriously difficult to get people to pay for something that used to be free. Lack of tracking and respect for privacy is not something most people would recognize as an obvious upgrade - hence the need for legislation in the first place. So the public will see it as paying for the exact thing that used to be free, and just won't do it. If Google won't find a loophole to bring marketing, paid results or some other monetization back in such a legislative environment, someone else will. You'll end up with something that's won't necessarily be better for consumers than the advertising model.

yoz-y 7y ago

Nobody ever paid for something like that. If there is anything on the internet people assume it should be free. Taking example of the HN crowd, every time there is a pay walled article people ask for web links, praise outline links and generally complain.

majewsky 7y ago
This is because there are free alternatives. When 99% of the articles on the frontpage are freely accessible, it feels "wrong" to find an article that requires you to cough up money first, especially when it does not hold up to the insane quality level implied by that price difference. If there were no free search engines, I can see people paying a few bucks a month for Google. Even more so if Google would then again make their results as useful to users as they once were. A practical example: I'm incredibly price-sensitive wrt productivity applications because there are many great such applications available as open source. I'm much less price-sensitive when it comes to video games (e.g. I spent 300€ on Breath of the Wild since it required buying a Switch) because the selection of open source video games is very limited.
e_proxus 7y ago
I would gladly pay, say $2-8 a month, for a search engine that actually delivered good results. Nowadays it's just SEO garbage and blog spam. Try searching for product reviews for example. It's almost impossible to find good, honest review sites via a search engine (they definitely exist though). Most are shopping sites or fake reviews that just list scraped product information.
wpietri 7y ago
> Nobody ever paid for something like that. Sure, because the web was ad-funded from the early days. People have an irrationally strong preference for "free". Even though in this case "free" really means "paid for by people manipulating how you spend your money". But I think it's implausible that if ads didn't happen the web would just be an empty wasteland. Up until the web existed, people paid for all sorts of information and informational services. And plenty of people still do. I spend maybe $1k/year on journalism.

dwild 7y ago

> I would be extremely surprised if search simply disappeared rather than move to a paid model. Sure, but that would be available to the ones that can profit from it directly, not the mass population that would have an hard time seeing value created from it. Instead they would expect word of mouth to be sufficent, and in a way they wouldn't be wrong in that world because in that world everything would depends from it. They just wouldn't have the luxury of having all theses others experience that depends on ads to exist, simply because ads wouldn't be there to allow them to exist.