> I just can't see even the best search engine either costing that much to run or why is that hard to imagine? the fixed costs of a search engine are enormous

> I just can't see even the best search engine either costing that much to run or why is that hard to imagine? the fixed costs of a search engine are enormous, and Google has 1) coming on three decades of investment in sunk costs and 2) billions of users now. > providing that much value. that's obviously a personal judgement you have to make for yourself. having a quite good search engine that is happy to just take my money in exchange for a useful service is definitely worth three coffees/month to me.