What search engine is currently showing the most useful results? What other tricks do we have aside of adding “reddit” or whatever internet community to the results?
What search engine is currently showing the most useful results? What other tricks do we have aside of adding “reddit” or whatever internet community to the results?
Wow. I don’t mind paying for stuff if it’s good. But seriously $5/month seems pretty expensive, and you only get 300 searches. $25 for unlimited searches, which seems like an insane amount of money.
The problem here is so many people are used to tech running at a loss on the books and/subsiding operating costs by selling customer data and analytics.
The reality is running tech companies is hard and expensive. The money here goes straight back into development. It’s just out of beta since march, and they have increased their quotas since I have been a customer.
But people are spoiled by free where you aren’t a customer. You are the product. If you are cool with that it’s fine. This isn’t the product for you.
For me, I like the idea and the searches are better than DDG/bing and startpage/google. So it’s worth the cost personally. I would rather pay that than say…Amazon prime where I’m both the customer and the product.
https://blog.kagi.com/kagi-orion-public-beta
I mean yes I agree with all your points. But I stand by the assertion that it’s too expensive. I could handle $5/month, perhaps, but 300 searches is waaaay too few. That’s 10 per day. I did 10 searches this morning before I got out of bed.
For unlimited searches it’s twice the cost of a streaming service. Yet it has negligible bandwidth costs, and significantly less storage cost, probably less development cost. Sure a small user base too, but at that price they’re really going to struggle to grow it!
It’s really just too expensive.
At $10 it’s 1000 unique searches. I search a ton and have it on my phone etc. haven’t exceeded the limit. I am at 600 searches right now, with a renewal due on the 24th.
They are writing a search engine from scratch. They don’t just randomize bing or google searches. So I think you may be underestimating the operating and especially development costs, probably hosting costs too.
But to each his own. Also those streaming services you mention. They don’t really turn a profit, and definitely don’t on subscriptions.
But the problem is that this is what it costs for a search that doesn’t sell your data or advertise to you. Search is expensive.
Fortunately you do get into the habit of just searching sites directly, like wikipedia, MDN, archwiki, etc., rather than using up your general purpose searches.
It’s this, or sell your data to Google for free searches.
And maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s just not sustainable for searched to be paid, but Kagi is really transparent about their pricing. It’s just expensive unless it’s subsidized by ads or data collection.
Pay for a search engine so you can get in the habit of not using it? They’ve really got you lol
I pay them to not get ads and not sell my data (and for higher quality searches than DDG) – you know how they say if you’re not paying, you’re the product?
Given that search actually costs X, once you’re cogniziant of it, you have to decide whether or not you want to pay X for a search, or find alternatives.
I will personally always be against any paywalls on information but to each their own I guess.
It’s not a paywall on information. What you’re paying for is a better search engine and better privacy. People have to be paid to provide you with that and, if you don’t want to pay them with cash, you can go and pay another search engine with your time and data.
Not sure where you are, but there’s practically no place in the US you get a lunch for that. In flat terms it’s quite cheep. It’s only expensive relative to free.
And when you think about it, your search service really is your internet. It shapes your whole internet experience. If that’s not worth $5/month to make sure it’s good and not polluted with ads, I don’t know what to tell you.
$5 is fine. 300 seems low. I wonder how many searches I actually do in a month.
I felt similarly about this, but upon reflecting, if the searches actually worked and didn’t ‘come in groups of 5’ due to SEO trash, it probably works out?
Haven’t tried it myself yet, but I have been finding myself in increasing frustration with Google and degenerate article sausage factories…