> The main problem is: who’s going to pay for it? Advertisements or paid results are not going to fly — conflict of interest. Private, paid access to search API

> The main problem is: who’s going to pay for it? Advertisements or paid results are not going to fly — conflict of interest. Private, paid access to search APIs or index internals is one opportunity, but it’s kind of shit and I think that preferring open data access and open APIs would be exceptionally valuable for the community. There's no reason you couldn't allow the first N number of api hits to be free, then charge for higher tiers of access.