this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2023
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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.
1000 is more reasonable but it’s still only 33 per day. I’ve done 52 searches today. $10 is still way too much.
How much better would a search engine have to be to make it worth the cost of a streaming service? For me, quite a lot…
But yeah I don’t mean to say your choice to pay for it isn’t valid. As you say, to each their own.
Understandable.
I think my point is for me and in my specific use case, I actually search less.
For example if I am debugging a process or working through some setup, I will often have to iterate through a series of searches with tweaks in DDg and sometimes even google. Using tweaks like site:some site.com, quoted portions of queries to reduce useless returns etc.
Kagi, again for me, had helped reduce that. I can’t often find a very quality source in the first query or two.
So the limit wasnt hugely a problem. I was actually VERY concerned like you because above 10 dollars is pretty steep. I initially signed up at 10, set limits not to exceed 15 and figured I would cancel and either submit a request at work for an annual or just ditch it.
Luckily two things happened that retained me. The first I already mentioned. The second was they bumped the quota to 1000.
Again I may still jsut see if I can get work to pay it out. But at 10 bucks it’s digestible, for me, for the value add. I also do no filtering. Just search whatever random shit I think of n the shitter in addition to curated work searches.
I’m not trying to sway you. Idgaf if you use it or not. Just trying to help provide useful information because for me, it was more “ehhh let’s see how it works out”
Finally, I have reached out to Vlad about suggestions and even corrections on things, both in the product and ancillaries (like their documentation). He’s responded each time and even corrected some of the issues. Which is really nice.
I could actually see myself paying for the $25/mo option and leveraging that into a "free" alt-google that slurps up all your data for me to monitize however I can. Be sure to keep an eye out for it! :D
They are using Google and a few other engines, but unlike Searx, they are using the official API instead of scraping, which is a big part of costs
Arguments like this would only be relevant if a subscription service's cost decreased globally as enrollment milestones were reached by their user population. Economies of scale kick in and you're not paying the same account... But we never see those sub cost decreases for some strange reason?
It's the search paid that are the most expensive. each search cost them ~ 1.25 cents
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.
Ah, the old paywall with extra steps. So let's take that further... In the future google has devolved even more than it has now. So it's just basically a misinformational mess riddled with ads. I guess to have access to reliable and non-predatory links/info you gotta now have the money for it. How much money will of course increase as any company gets established of course further pushing lower income people out.
And don't even pretend this is far stretched. People struggling to get by get boned by shit like this all the time.
It's too abusable. I don't like it at all. I also don't like the idea of the government having full control of the internet/information either. I don't know what the solution is but locking information behind money, even if it's in a roundabout way, is not a good solution.
So in other words, it's a paywall on information.
Well no. The information is still there. It’s an index of that information