Comment by OJFord
9 months ago
> I know very few people who would pay for a search engine.
It's actually maybe ChatGPT et al. that have done most to warm me up to the idea. I've tried Plus for a few months, basically using it like better search. I don't think I'll stick with it mainly because it's a pretty steep cost (enough that I want to go back to not having it for a bit at least, see how much of a problem it really is) - but it does make me wonder if perhaps Kagi can get me a lot of the way for half the price (the non-LLM tier).
>> I know very few people who would pay for a search engine.
A 'fact,' which, if true, makes little sense when you look at it from the PoV as a tool.
With real physical tools, if you only use it occasionally, get a cheap one. But when you use it all the time, it pays to invest in a quality model.
Considering the frequency even the n00best of tech normies of the world use a search engine it makes sense for everyone to obtain such "a quality model." Sadly, that doesn't mean everyone will do so.
[me: Kagi unlimited user since they did the pricing change a couple of months back]
To be fair though, I don't rent my physical tools. I don't pay £20pcm for access to a quality drill or whatever, I just bought it once.
I'm not saying that should be Kagi's model, obviously it does have marginal costs for my usage that Makita doesn't, I'm just saying the analogy doesn't really hold up I suppose.
I think I'd probably prefer usage based pricing, but I know a lot of people here at least would complain that it gave Kagi an inverse incentive to build a good (at finding information quickly and easily) search engine.