Paying for Search—A Different Perspective on Using the Internet
I took a bold step, quite bold indeed, especially considering that I rarely pay for internet services, such as the dazzling array of memberships offered by various websites—I have none of them, as I have a consumption principle of not subscribing.
I took this rather bold step by paying for a search engine—I paid a monthly fee of $25 for Kagi.
At this point, many people have probably diagnosed my condition—this isn’t about boldness at all, but rather that I've gone crazy.
Indeed, our generation grew up with the internet, and search engines have been free since their inception. Why pay to use one?
But looking at it from another angle, if search engines have been free for over twenty years, then who has been paying for me all this time?
Advertisers, of course. This business model is unique to the internet—users can seemingly use the internet freely, but ultimately, advertisers foot the bill. This applies not just to search engines but also to high-traffic websites and short videos. For me, search engines are the internet product I use most frequently.
I'm not entirely against subscription-based internet products. About ten years ago, I abandoned Gmail, which I had used for many years, in favor of the paid email service Fastmail, which costs just over $3 per month. Additionally, VPN services are also subscription-based products. WeChat Reading might count as half a subscription—I say half because I purchase its service year by year rather than subscribing continuously.
As for various video memberships, I might occasionally buy a month, but most of the time, I shamelessly ask friends for access.
So, paying for a search engine is quite bold even in my eyes.
I should clarify that I haven't subscribed to this search engine, since it accepts PayPal payments and I happened to have some balance, I bought one month of service. Due to PayPal's high fees, I paid nearly $27 in total.
Don't rush to call it wasteful. They offer cheaper plans: $5 monthly for 300 searches per month and $10 monthly for unlimited searches, while the $25 monthly plan I chose includes various latest AI large language models.
Considering that subscribing to various large language models on platforms like Poe.com also costs about $20 per month, the $25 is relatively reasonable.
Given my views on AI, I shouldn't spend money on any AI services. However, I've found some usecases of AI, so I have some need for it. As I wrote before, current AI large language models are very much like sheepdogs—their intelligence is impressive, and they can be effective in specific areas (like drug detection or herding sheep), but their intelligence may have reached its limit and won't improve with further training.
This is because the materials used for training language models have been exhausted. If you follow the latest AI news, you probably know that ChatGPT's newest models produce more "hallucinations" (nonsensical outputs) than older models.
Large language models have been widely popular for two years, and during this time, the internet has been flooded with "hallucinated" content generated by these models. Training the latest versions with such material is like a dog chasing its tail.
Although large AI models can sometimes replace search engines, they can't in most cases, and current search engine products are getting increasingly worse. The search engines I typically use include:
- Google: The experience is deteriorating; the feeling from twenty years ago is long gone. From a product design perspective, Google seems intent on providing as many irrelevant results as possible to confuse users, somewhat like IKEA's store layout design.
- Baidu: Since the Chinese internet has been polluted by various self-media accounts (Baidu Accounts, Tencent Accounts, etc.), and Baidu deliberately increases the search weight of Baidu Account content, the first few pages of Baidu search results are filled with low-quality content mass-produced by self-media. I sincerely hope this company goes bankrupt soon.
- Bing: The experience is even worse than Baidu.
Kagi offers 100 searches for a free trial. During the trial period, I found its search results to be more accurate, generally providing what I wanted on the first page, so as my trial quota was running out, I was willing to try it more deeply for a month.
This has prompted me to reconsider how I use the internet. Servers have costs, and programmers need salaries. Why is the internet free? Which internet products offer options not paid for by advertisers? Most products don't provide this option, with short videos being the most prominent example. So I'm considering that if a product allows users to choose to pay rather than profiting from selling user information, I'm willing to try it; if this option isn't provided, I won't use the product. This might cost some money monthly, but could save considerable time.
Kagi's statistics page shows that about 40,000+ people worldwide are paying to use it. I wonder if this is enough to sustain its operations. After trying it for a month, I probably won't continue with the $25 version—it's a bit expensive—I will choose the $10 tier. In any case, I hope to see more products like this in the future—products that treat users as users rather than as products.
Disclosure: Though this article is not an advertisement for any product, it contains my Fastmail referral link.