[keyle]

Yeah. It's just sad that it was what search was, for free, before. This idea that you search for things, and you find them, instead of paid per word shitty articles and ads. Nutty concept in 2023.

At this point, the free options are so bad I'm considering writing my own. It won't do 50% of what the big ones do but it will do it well.

[kalupa]

Was it ever, really, free, though? you and I were never, really, the customer, ultimately

[unshavedyak]

Yea i hate this framing. Nothing is free and we should be wanting to move towards payment ourselves. Yea, i'd prefer "payment" to be the cost of locally running a server, but i'll take what i can get.

The days of believing free is viable for any online service should be long gone. Hell it's difficult to even determine if paying for a service actually protects you from being the product - because often that isn't the case. However free should be a no-brainer these days. There is no free.