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> Search engines are intrinsically but not monetarily valuable to users. Search engines are monetarily, but not intrinsically, valuable to advertisers. I”d li

> Search engines are intrinsically but not monetarily valuable to users. Search engines are monetarily, but not intrinsically, valuable to advertisers. I”d like to offer a different view, one that thousands of subscribers at Kagi search can hopefully stand behind too. (Kagi founder here) Searching has a monetary value and a cost, the only question is whether the user is paying for it or a third party is paying for the user (a cringy thought when you think about it). This question is answered by the very business model of the search engine, which determines who its customer is. It can either be its users (like in the case of Kagi and mwmbl) or advertisers (like most other search engine). Although it is really hard to break through the habit of getting search for "free", we are at least happy to be able to offer this choice to the consumer today. I am expecting to see many more paid search engines in the future.

techdragon 4y ago
As someone who has been architecting a paid “deep search” tool for a couple of years now ( my approach is trying to enable very deep search flexibility, like you can grip files on your hard drive, but balancing that against usability at internet scale is very hard ) I have been on board with the idea the “search is valuable enough to end users that they will pay” for awhile. The issue isn’t value, it’s marketing it successfully enough to gather users at a rate that covers costs. I haven’t launched my project even in private alpha to anyone because it still costs too much per search, for other search engines it will cost less and hopefully we get a healthy ecosystem of search tools eventually. Based on what I’m seeing in google search quality… their days of unquestioned dominance died a few years ago. The king is dead, the prince (bing) is on vacation somewhere, and the crown is up for grabs.
mistrial9 4y ago
How is 'kagi' related to CEO Kee Nethery ?

techdragon 4y ago

As someone who has been architecting a paid “deep search” tool for a couple of years now ( my approach is trying to enable very deep search flexibility, like you can grip files on your hard drive, but balancing that against usability at internet scale is very hard ) I have been on board with the idea the “search is valuable enough to end users that they will pay” for awhile. The issue isn’t value, it’s marketing it successfully enough to gather users at a rate that covers costs. I haven’t launched my project even in private alpha to anyone because it still costs too much per search, for other search engines it will cost less and hopefully we get a healthy ecosystem of search tools eventually. Based on what I’m seeing in google search quality… their days of unquestioned dominance died a few years ago. The king is dead, the prince (bing) is on vacation somewhere, and the crown is up for grabs.

mistrial9 4y ago

How is 'kagi' related to CEO Kee Nethery ?