4 ms·

Nice. I'd pay 5-10$/mo for a search engine that didn't just funnel me into the revenue-extracting regions of the web like Google does.

RhysU 5y ago
A subscriber-supported search engine sounds cool to me. Any precedent?
- xtracto 5y ago
  Copernic ( https://copernic.com/ https://copernic.com/ ) had Copernic Agent Professional, a for-pay desktop application that had really good search features, a while ago . Not sure if they discontinued it.
  - gompertz 5y ago
    Wow blast from the past. I think I was using Copernic all the way back in 2003... Forgot all about them. Thanks!
- gianthockey495 5y ago
  You'll like https://neeva.com/ https://neeva.com/
  - fxtentacle 5y ago
    How do they pay for it?
    - yellow_postit 5y ago
      From the FAQ: > …Eventually, we plan to charge our members $4.95/month.
- samcrawford 5y ago
  Kagi.com does this. In closed beta at the moment, but you can email and request access.
  - eitland 5y ago
    I've tested Kagi a bit. It nicely gave me exactly what I wanted even in cases where names could have different meanings in different contexts (I tested with Kotlin) The basic results are good with some nice touches here and there like including a "blast from the past" section with older results which is actually what I sometimes want and another section where it widens up a bit (i.e. what Google does by default?). Furthermore you can apply pre defined search "lenses" that focuses your search, or even make your own, and you can boost or de-rank sites. I had not expected this to happen so quickly but I'm going to move from DDG to kagi as my default search engine for at least a couple of days because I am fed up with both Googles and DDGs inability to actually respect my queries. If ir continues to work as well as it does today I'll happily pay $10 a month and I might also buy 6 months gift cards for close friends and family for next Christmas. Think about it, unlike an ad financed engine incentives are extremely closely aligned here: the smartest thing Kagi can do is to get my results as fast as possible to conserve server resources (and delight their customer). For an ad financed engine abd especially one that also serves ads on search results pages as well the obvious thing to do is to keep me bouncing between tweaking my search query and various that almost has my question answered but not quite. (That said, if one us going to stay mainstream I recommend DDG over Google since 1. for me at least Googles results are just as bad and 2. with DDG it is at least extremely easy to check with Google as well to see if they have a better result 3. competition is good)
- KarlKemp 5y ago
  As a general rule, nobody is willing to pay what they are worth to advertisers. Facebook makes 70$ / y / user in the US. You would pay $70 for an ad-free Facebook? Congratulation, you must be an above-average earner. Also: your value to advertisers just tripled. If you are willing to pay $210, it will immediately triple again.
  - derekjdanserl 5y ago
    Great point! So simple, but as someone who has never worked on this side of things I never thought about it. How would legal limitations on data collection, like GDPR, influence the ratio? None? Only an insignificant degree? Or enough to actually influence business decisions?

RhysU 5y ago

A subscriber-supported search engine sounds cool to me. Any precedent?

xtracto 5y ago
Copernic ( https://copernic.com/ https://copernic.com/ ) had Copernic Agent Professional, a for-pay desktop application that had really good search features, a while ago . Not sure if they discontinued it.
- gompertz 5y ago
  Wow blast from the past. I think I was using Copernic all the way back in 2003... Forgot all about them. Thanks!
gianthockey495 5y ago
You'll like https://neeva.com/ https://neeva.com/
- fxtentacle 5y ago
  How do they pay for it?
  - yellow_postit 5y ago
    From the FAQ: > …Eventually, we plan to charge our members $4.95/month.
samcrawford 5y ago
Kagi.com does this. In closed beta at the moment, but you can email and request access.
- eitland 5y ago
  I've tested Kagi a bit. It nicely gave me exactly what I wanted even in cases where names could have different meanings in different contexts (I tested with Kotlin) The basic results are good with some nice touches here and there like including a "blast from the past" section with older results which is actually what I sometimes want and another section where it widens up a bit (i.e. what Google does by default?). Furthermore you can apply pre defined search "lenses" that focuses your search, or even make your own, and you can boost or de-rank sites. I had not expected this to happen so quickly but I'm going to move from DDG to kagi as my default search engine for at least a couple of days because I am fed up with both Googles and DDGs inability to actually respect my queries. If ir continues to work as well as it does today I'll happily pay $10 a month and I might also buy 6 months gift cards for close friends and family for next Christmas. Think about it, unlike an ad financed engine incentives are extremely closely aligned here: the smartest thing Kagi can do is to get my results as fast as possible to conserve server resources (and delight their customer). For an ad financed engine abd especially one that also serves ads on search results pages as well the obvious thing to do is to keep me bouncing between tweaking my search query and various that almost has my question answered but not quite. (That said, if one us going to stay mainstream I recommend DDG over Google since 1. for me at least Googles results are just as bad and 2. with DDG it is at least extremely easy to check with Google as well to see if they have a better result 3. competition is good)
KarlKemp 5y ago
As a general rule, nobody is willing to pay what they are worth to advertisers. Facebook makes 70$ / y / user in the US. You would pay $70 for an ad-free Facebook? Congratulation, you must be an above-average earner. Also: your value to advertisers just tripled. If you are willing to pay $210, it will immediately triple again.
- derekjdanserl 5y ago
  Great point! So simple, but as someone who has never worked on this side of things I never thought about it. How would legal limitations on data collection, like GDPR, influence the ratio? None? Only an insignificant degree? Or enough to actually influence business decisions?