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Monetization wouldn’t be an issue if we paid for these services. I’d be willing to pay $5-10 a month for a good search engine that respects your privacy. But I

Monetization wouldn’t be an issue if we paid for these services. I’d be willing to pay $5-10 a month for a good search engine that respects your privacy. But I guess the average person hates the idea of paying for any software these days.

Folcon 5y ago
As much as I subscribe to this perspective, when I think about how much money must be flowing through these ecosystems, I wonder if that's the real price point? I mean theoretically how much would you be willing to pay for search that has no advertisement. $1000 a year? I'm genuinely curious, what would a privacy first non-advertising based approach cost? I mean I suspect you could discount it by not tracking individual users but instead just advertise on results searched, but what does the extreme version of this cost like do you think? What kind of money do we need to put on the table that someone serving it goes, you know what, let's just provide a great search product, if we start trying to mess around with ads / tracking, we're risking killing this golden goose?
- salawat 5y ago
  Why not go to your local library, maintainers of an ad free search index, and find out? This isn't novel work, and is likely even cheaper than the dead tree variant. The most expensive parts are the hardware and storage costs for the index.
  - Folcon 5y ago
    This is pretty interesting, would libraries even be interested in maintaining a search index? That's like a return to yahoo directory / search index. Or were you imagining something different?
    - salawat 5y ago
      Personally? I think you've already got steps in that direction with things like the Internet Archive, but that's subtly different because the ergonomics are more around you need to know what you're looking for to find it. The major issue that may hold it back though, is libraries wouldn't sacrifice their current duties and role in society to do it, (which I agree with wholeheartedly). and anyone trying to host an honest search index is going to have to deal with the political baggage associated therewith. If you host for profit, you will get sued. If you did it as a research project/labor of love (from the United States), arguably, you may have grounds to tell other people's lawyers to stuff it, but there are certain interests which will spend every hour and minute they can trying to get the courts to twist your arm into preserving the integrity of their business model. The law os also fraught with precedent that makes things like pirate site listing a no-no; but it is not clear to my knowledge if that is a blanket ban on indexing, or a ban on indexing + any type of amplification while reaping financial benefit thereby. I've contemplated doing a project in that direction a few times. I always end up waffling before I get started though. I'd totally do it, but I have a feeling I'd better get a JD first unless I essentially want a hobby project to turn into some lawyer's recreational revenue stream. It's sad it's come to that, but it is what is. It is definitely on my list of "Stuff to do once I've built myself up a nest egg". As I truly think an index unpoisoned by commercial concerns is something the world expected, and increasingly needs. I weep for a return to a more objective picture of the Web; one where it was in a literal sense more the worlds hypertext implemented phonebook rather than a cesspool of SEO garbage, and lawsuit driven optics management/platforming tool. It just blows, because the moment you start getting people to help stave off what operational costs are incurred, and it goes beyond donation/volunteerism, you're done. Somebody will have an in to coerce you into distorting your search index. If not on commercial interest, then on the basis that of course, "some arsehole will host CP (or other verboten content) out there, and what do when you index it?" I may be a militant enough "info must be free" personality to undertake the journey... But I'm one person, and my interest is prone to fickleness, and I've been called an absolute madman by enough people I have the feeling that if things did get off the ground sufficiently, I am unsure whether or not I'd find someone else willing to work on keeping the thing available. And there are few things I hate in life more than being a Single Point Of Failure.
- FearlessNebula 5y ago
  Yeah I wonder the same, and we really don’t know. I often wonder if Facebook would be better if it didn’t rely on ads and data-mining. Would Facebook be “good”? Would Facebook even exist at this scale if people had to pay? People are so hesitant to pay even a buck for an app, it makes me question if all these massive services could’ve been possible if they weren’t “free”.
  - Folcon 5y ago
    I feel like there's a world of difference between paying a buck for an app and paying for something like this, you could argue that the value delivered is so high the fee would be out of the ballpark for most to be able to pay. But there are definitely people who are genuinely interested in paying. Even facebook does provide me with some benefit, but less at present than Alphabet does, though maybe with Oculus that will change?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- pdonis 5y ago
  > I wonder if that's the real price point? Alphabet's total revenue in 2021 was about $257B. If, say, a billion users paid an average of $257 a year, that would be the same annual revenue. That doesn't seem at all unreasonable (less than $22 a month for actual services for me as a user unadulterated by ads and without privacy concerns? where do I sign up?), particularly since if they were just providing services users actually need--search, maps, gmail, etc.--and not having to add on all the extra effort of advertising, it would be cheaper for them to provide those services to users than it is now.
  - Folcon 5y ago
    Ok, that's an interesting take, as an example, I know that I'd toyed on several occasions paying for youtube red except that a part of me really fundamentally doesn't trust that they'll keep to their statement that it will actually be ad free[0]. As a comparison, I've paid for Spotify for a long time primarily to get rid of ads and was entirely ok with that. I certainly pay for dev tools on a yearly basis that cost me a similar level as $257 a year and so I feel like paying for what Alphabet offer in terms of map / video / search fits comfortably in that same bracket of cost to value that I'd be ok making that trade as well. I don't know if I'd pay themselves Alphabet that much, primarily because like with they Youtube example, what kind of a commitment[1] could they make that makes me believe that me paying them would mean they stop treating me as a product and as a customer instead? It sort of feels like that ship sailed a long time ago, ad money is very seductive it seems. - [0]: It also doesn't help that their recommendation engine seems to give worse recommendations over time, so a regular purge seems to be required to get back to reasonable recommendations. - [1]: This ends up being a fun thought experiment.
    - pdonis 5y ago
      > what kind of a commitment[1] could they make that makes me believe that me paying them would mean they stop treating me as a product and as a customer instead? I'm not sure they could make a credible commitment to that at this point. I'm not sure there is any viable way for them to transition, at scale, from their current business model to one where they just charge users directly for services those users want. But the latter business model is still there, waiting, and sooner or later I think someone will find a way to use it to take Google's market.
danuker 5y ago
Like paying for a smart TV does not make advertising on smart TVs an issue?
- FearlessNebula 5y ago
  Well that’s just greed, or driving the base price down by subsidizing with ads. So paying won’t prevent this, but if a product is “free” you can be pretty much certain it’ll be riddled with ads.
AvocadoPanic 5y ago
I'd also want to maintain my own list of domains I'd want excluded from my results. I should be able to share my 'shitlist' with other users and see the rank of my shitlist domains that are included on other's shitlist.
izacus 5y ago
Open the neighbouring comment thread about YouTube Vanced and you'll see that even an average HNer thinks asking for payment is an insult to their very being.
- FearlessNebula 5y ago
  Which is bad, because if developers (who know the work that goes into building software better than anybody else) aren’t very willing to pay, it’s hopeless to expect your average person to be willing to pay for software.
bryans 5y ago
I got curious about this and wanted to spitball some numbers. According to a Google search, Google's average user "conducts 3-4 searches each day." Nobody goes into details, so we don't know if those include subsequent searches or the average number of pages they looked at -- though I think we can assume that would be pretty close to 1, as most people are going to find what they're looking for in the first few results. Let's say the average searches per day is 4 and they are general enough queries to be showing ads, of which there are an average of 3 per page. It would be a mix of CPM and clicks, but each placement will average out to roughly $0.007 in revenue. That's 360 ads per month resulting in ~$2.50 per user. Of course, that doesn't include the specific overhead of brokering the ads or developing and maintaining such a bizarrely complicated system, and it's safe to assume their margins are at most 20-30%. So, after expending all of that effort in creating this anti-privacy, anti-consumer, anti-competitive system that's rigged against both the advertisers and users, they're making a whopping $0.75/mo per search user. Which is all to say that if search were simply search, then they could: charge $10/year for an ad-free and privacy-focused service, drastically simplify their entire infrastructure, reassign the ad support staff toward much-needed consumer issues, and actually be making more money in the process. However, this doesn't include Maps or other services, which is how they convert that $0.75/mo search user into a $10/mo ecosystem addict (or $1,000/mo supporter of content creators). Search is the method for directing traffic where they want it to go, and the trick is to also be making money from all of those places, with even more profitable ads or salable products. I think any search engine will struggle with this when it inevitably grows beyond its core product, because the alternative is a mess of different companies, products, APIs and methodologies that barely work together -- moral high ground wages aren't exactly an ingredient for explosive, cohesive and industry-competitive innovation.
- ascagnel_ 5y ago
  A couple of thoughts on this: - You're completely discounting the overhead of running a $10/mo service, not to mention the cost of acquisition. - Google and other free-to-use search engines aren't going away in this scenario, so this hypothetical paid search engine will need to "compete with free" - If you're competing with free, you need to offer a better experience than the free service. Cutting the BS sounds good, but is it $10/mo better than the free service? Finally, the biggest issue is that, with the ad model, the minimum Google earns per user is $0.75/mo, but they could make notably more off of negotiated deals for big purchases (eg: Google could sell placements against high-dollar things like real estate for more money) or could just get a windfall from high-frequency months; with your model, the maximum the business can ever earn is $10/mo.
immibis 5y ago
It's substantial friction. You pay for a search engine, another search engine, a documentation site, YouTube, Hacker News, 50 different newspapers... What I want is some fixed revenue-sharing service a la YouTube Premium but for the entire Internet. Pay $XX/month, and get access to a zillion websites, with each one receiving revenue proportional to how much you use it. Except the websites would probably game that by loading a zillion empty iframes or something. Damn.

Folcon 5y ago

As much as I subscribe to this perspective, when I think about how much money must be flowing through these ecosystems, I wonder if that's the real price point? I mean theoretically how much would you be willing to pay for search that has no advertisement. $1000 a year? I'm genuinely curious, what would a privacy first non-advertising based approach cost? I mean I suspect you could discount it by not tracking individual users but instead just advertise on results searched, but what does the extreme version of this cost like do you think? What kind of money do we need to put on the table that someone serving it goes, you know what, let's just provide a great search product, if we start trying to mess around with ads / tracking, we're risking killing this golden goose?

salawat 5y ago
Why not go to your local library, maintainers of an ad free search index, and find out? This isn't novel work, and is likely even cheaper than the dead tree variant. The most expensive parts are the hardware and storage costs for the index.
- Folcon 5y ago
  This is pretty interesting, would libraries even be interested in maintaining a search index? That's like a return to yahoo directory / search index. Or were you imagining something different?
  - salawat 5y ago
    Personally? I think you've already got steps in that direction with things like the Internet Archive, but that's subtly different because the ergonomics are more around you need to know what you're looking for to find it. The major issue that may hold it back though, is libraries wouldn't sacrifice their current duties and role in society to do it, (which I agree with wholeheartedly). and anyone trying to host an honest search index is going to have to deal with the political baggage associated therewith. If you host for profit, you will get sued. If you did it as a research project/labor of love (from the United States), arguably, you may have grounds to tell other people's lawyers to stuff it, but there are certain interests which will spend every hour and minute they can trying to get the courts to twist your arm into preserving the integrity of their business model. The law os also fraught with precedent that makes things like pirate site listing a no-no; but it is not clear to my knowledge if that is a blanket ban on indexing, or a ban on indexing + any type of amplification while reaping financial benefit thereby. I've contemplated doing a project in that direction a few times. I always end up waffling before I get started though. I'd totally do it, but I have a feeling I'd better get a JD first unless I essentially want a hobby project to turn into some lawyer's recreational revenue stream. It's sad it's come to that, but it is what is. It is definitely on my list of "Stuff to do once I've built myself up a nest egg". As I truly think an index unpoisoned by commercial concerns is something the world expected, and increasingly needs. I weep for a return to a more objective picture of the Web; one where it was in a literal sense more the worlds hypertext implemented phonebook rather than a cesspool of SEO garbage, and lawsuit driven optics management/platforming tool. It just blows, because the moment you start getting people to help stave off what operational costs are incurred, and it goes beyond donation/volunteerism, you're done. Somebody will have an in to coerce you into distorting your search index. If not on commercial interest, then on the basis that of course, "some arsehole will host CP (or other verboten content) out there, and what do when you index it?" I may be a militant enough "info must be free" personality to undertake the journey... But I'm one person, and my interest is prone to fickleness, and I've been called an absolute madman by enough people I have the feeling that if things did get off the ground sufficiently, I am unsure whether or not I'd find someone else willing to work on keeping the thing available. And there are few things I hate in life more than being a Single Point Of Failure.
FearlessNebula 5y ago
Yeah I wonder the same, and we really don’t know. I often wonder if Facebook would be better if it didn’t rely on ads and data-mining. Would Facebook be “good”? Would Facebook even exist at this scale if people had to pay? People are so hesitant to pay even a buck for an app, it makes me question if all these massive services could’ve been possible if they weren’t “free”.
- Folcon 5y ago
  I feel like there's a world of difference between paying a buck for an app and paying for something like this, you could argue that the value delivered is so high the fee would be out of the ballpark for most to be able to pay. But there are definitely people who are genuinely interested in paying. Even facebook does provide me with some benefit, but less at present than Alphabet does, though maybe with Oculus that will change?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
pdonis 5y ago
> I wonder if that's the real price point? Alphabet's total revenue in 2021 was about $257B. If, say, a billion users paid an average of $257 a year, that would be the same annual revenue. That doesn't seem at all unreasonable (less than $22 a month for actual services for me as a user unadulterated by ads and without privacy concerns? where do I sign up?), particularly since if they were just providing services users actually need--search, maps, gmail, etc.--and not having to add on all the extra effort of advertising, it would be cheaper for them to provide those services to users than it is now.
- Folcon 5y ago
  Ok, that's an interesting take, as an example, I know that I'd toyed on several occasions paying for youtube red except that a part of me really fundamentally doesn't trust that they'll keep to their statement that it will actually be ad free[0]. As a comparison, I've paid for Spotify for a long time primarily to get rid of ads and was entirely ok with that. I certainly pay for dev tools on a yearly basis that cost me a similar level as $257 a year and so I feel like paying for what Alphabet offer in terms of map / video / search fits comfortably in that same bracket of cost to value that I'd be ok making that trade as well. I don't know if I'd pay themselves Alphabet that much, primarily because like with they Youtube example, what kind of a commitment[1] could they make that makes me believe that me paying them would mean they stop treating me as a product and as a customer instead? It sort of feels like that ship sailed a long time ago, ad money is very seductive it seems. - [0]: It also doesn't help that their recommendation engine seems to give worse recommendations over time, so a regular purge seems to be required to get back to reasonable recommendations. - [1]: This ends up being a fun thought experiment.
  - pdonis 5y ago
    > what kind of a commitment[1] could they make that makes me believe that me paying them would mean they stop treating me as a product and as a customer instead? I'm not sure they could make a credible commitment to that at this point. I'm not sure there is any viable way for them to transition, at scale, from their current business model to one where they just charge users directly for services those users want. But the latter business model is still there, waiting, and sooner or later I think someone will find a way to use it to take Google's market.

danuker 5y ago

Like paying for a smart TV does not make advertising on smart TVs an issue?

FearlessNebula 5y ago
Well that’s just greed, or driving the base price down by subsidizing with ads. So paying won’t prevent this, but if a product is “free” you can be pretty much certain it’ll be riddled with ads.

AvocadoPanic 5y ago

I'd also want to maintain my own list of domains I'd want excluded from my results. I should be able to share my 'shitlist' with other users and see the rank of my shitlist domains that are included on other's shitlist.

izacus 5y ago

Open the neighbouring comment thread about YouTube Vanced and you'll see that even an average HNer thinks asking for payment is an insult to their very being.

FearlessNebula 5y ago
Which is bad, because if developers (who know the work that goes into building software better than anybody else) aren’t very willing to pay, it’s hopeless to expect your average person to be willing to pay for software.

bryans 5y ago

I got curious about this and wanted to spitball some numbers. According to a Google search, Google's average user "conducts 3-4 searches each day." Nobody goes into details, so we don't know if those include subsequent searches or the average number of pages they looked at -- though I think we can assume that would be pretty close to 1, as most people are going to find what they're looking for in the first few results. Let's say the average searches per day is 4 and they are general enough queries to be showing ads, of which there are an average of 3 per page. It would be a mix of CPM and clicks, but each placement will average out to roughly $0.007 in revenue. That's 360 ads per month resulting in ~$2.50 per user. Of course, that doesn't include the specific overhead of brokering the ads or developing and maintaining such a bizarrely complicated system, and it's safe to assume their margins are at most 20-30%. So, after expending all of that effort in creating this anti-privacy, anti-consumer, anti-competitive system that's rigged against both the advertisers and users, they're making a whopping $0.75/mo per search user. Which is all to say that if search were simply search, then they could: charge $10/year for an ad-free and privacy-focused service, drastically simplify their entire infrastructure, reassign the ad support staff toward much-needed consumer issues, and actually be making more money in the process. However, this doesn't include Maps or other services, which is how they convert that $0.75/mo search user into a $10/mo ecosystem addict (or $1,000/mo supporter of content creators). Search is the method for directing traffic where they want it to go, and the trick is to also be making money from all of those places, with even more profitable ads or salable products. I think any search engine will struggle with this when it inevitably grows beyond its core product, because the alternative is a mess of different companies, products, APIs and methodologies that barely work together -- moral high ground wages aren't exactly an ingredient for explosive, cohesive and industry-competitive innovation.

ascagnel_ 5y ago
A couple of thoughts on this: - You're completely discounting the overhead of running a $10/mo service, not to mention the cost of acquisition. - Google and other free-to-use search engines aren't going away in this scenario, so this hypothetical paid search engine will need to "compete with free" - If you're competing with free, you need to offer a better experience than the free service. Cutting the BS sounds good, but is it $10/mo better than the free service? Finally, the biggest issue is that, with the ad model, the minimum Google earns per user is $0.75/mo, but they could make notably more off of negotiated deals for big purchases (eg: Google could sell placements against high-dollar things like real estate for more money) or could just get a windfall from high-frequency months; with your model, the maximum the business can ever earn is $10/mo.

immibis 5y ago

It's substantial friction. You pay for a search engine, another search engine, a documentation site, YouTube, Hacker News, 50 different newspapers... What I want is some fixed revenue-sharing service a la YouTube Premium but for the entire Internet. Pay $XX/month, and get access to a zillion websites, with each one receiving revenue proportional to how much you use it. Except the websites would probably game that by loading a zillion empty iframes or something. Damn.