this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023
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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I posted this further down the thread, but I'll put it here so it's more visible in case the discussion is interesting.

According to this source, DuckDuckGo makes ~$0.0027 per search from ad revenue. Kagi @ $5/300 searches is ~$0.01667/search, or >6x higher than DDG's ad revenue. So is the overall value proposition from Kagi >6x higher than DDG?

Or to put it another way, for ~$5/month, I can get unlimited VPN through Mullvad, which if I'm not mistaken is quite a bit more resource intensive than search per added customer.

So $5/month for 300 searches, or $10/month for unlimited is a tough pill to swallow, especially when I have no guarantees that they're not also selling my data. If they were a nonprofit, I'd trust them a bit more and just chalk the higher cost up to limited scale, but AFAIK they're private so they have little incentive to reduce prices as they get more popular.

So I'm skeptical.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

I've been paying $10 per month for 1000 searches for a few months now and had no plans on cancelling. This unlimited change makes it even better. Not being constantly frustrated by poor search results trying to sell you stuff or influence what you're looking for is worth the money.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@narwhal Anyone recommending self-hosting searchx instead

  1. https://dalf.github.io/searxng/donate.html They also ask for donations to help improve code
  2. Cheapest server is at around $5/month.
  3. Maintenance, upgrades, DDOS protection and whatnot also costs money.
  4. You're still only as good as Google results allow you to be.
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Correct. Same dum dums complaining about the proce are there ones buying $12 lattes/day.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

For some, money is tight, and there are already so many subscriptions available for premium service. Many of those are solutions to combat forced enshitification. The Internet is too powerful of a tool to back us into paying for every little feature. So forgive me for being a dum dum and not giving in and enabling these services that aim to nickel and dime.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago

No one is saying that you should pay for every little feature.

This whole thread is about a service which, in my opinion, is worth that $10 (or $5 for the standard plan) when its results are way better than the alternatives and, as the business plan is clear, it doesn't sell you to third-parties.

And obviously, I don't assume that the same people above who suggest self-hosting SearXNG are in remote third world countries, because economically the price is on par with it. (Yeah, yeah, "But muh $5/mo vps can do it!" You manage that and keep up with it and see how you like it just to save those nickels and dimes.)

Search was never free. And we're talking about just $10.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

ITT: People who haven't tried Kagi.

Edit: Not shilling, Google just doesn't do what I need/want anymore.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You’d know if you looked it up on Kagi ;)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Sometimes the results are things I regret looking up. Like yesterday I looked up CSAM rather than asking and now I've got that in my search history. At least I looked it up on Kagi and not Google!

Edit: I'm not even sure if Kagi keeps a user history. I think they might not.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

It’s a setting you can toggle off or on.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Sweet. I guess I will use that for a month or two and then reevaluate.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Oh nice! That's cool.