So I've been using Kagi for a while now as a paid search engine. I always thought it's $25 a month plan was a little steep for search, but a) I got work to pay for it, and b) startpage nee google was getting less and less useful, and bing and whatever used it has… well been worse for me always.
Anyway, I just got told that they've now adjusted their pricing / added features to Ultimate, and I think (at least now) that's actually added a lot of value if you're into the more advanced LLVM / AI models / chat. I have also been paying $20 a month through work for ChatGPT Plus. I might drop that because Kagi now lets you chat with / use GPT4 as well as Claude2 and a Google LLVM model with the one $25 a month, in addition to all the search and AI Search (with sourcing) together.
I don't know how well paid search is going to ever do - it might be a short term tool. But for now, not having ads in the search, a straightforward pay for service model that seems to work just as well with their stated privacy goals, and getting multiple AI LLVM is pretty cool "one stop shopping" if you will. I also like giving a shot to less ad based models for Internet services that I can't see how they don't become privacy invasions.
I think $5 a month is reasonable especially if it means a good alternative to google exists. But yeah having to sign in sucks and it should be free but I definitely don’t want ads on a search engine. I wish they would open source at least.
This I don't understand. Why should search be free? Who do you think would do that amount of work and donate it to the internet? Search has always cost money, we just paid with ads and that model has kind of reached its enshittification maximum to be useful to me,and apparently others.
Governments. The internet and the knowledge it gives to people is the same public good as roads, water, power, sewerage, etc. All of these in a reasonable modern society need to be owned and maintained by the government through taxation and provided to the public for free.
Then they would spend billions and it would be worse than the current alternatives. They have no incentive to have more users, in fact it costs more to be useful than to just take money from the government and have no users
Your government might offer it for their citizens, but do the taxpayers want to subsidize the access to other billion people on the internet who do not pay tax to your government.
As for my government, I don't trust them enough to not push state propaganda in search results.
I get what you’re saying, but that’s still not free. You just roll up the cost in taxes.