[kelnos]

It only feels that way because search has been free essentially forever.

But think -- really think -- about how much value you get out of search. Like, if you didn't have search, would you even be able to use the web? I think $10/mo for something I critically rely on several tens of times a day is a bargain!

Certainly it might be hard to sell search at $10/mo when people can get by at $0/mo. But that isn't the same thing as saying it's steep.

[carlosjobim]

If you had two pubs next to each other, one selling the best beer in the world for $1 a pint and the other giving away free low quality beer, the one giving away free beer would have an enormous line and the other a few people inside. You just can't argue with free when it comes to most people. People will drive for hours to get a free hot dog. People have got it in their head that things on the computer screen have to be free and you can't easily take that out of their heads.

[aaravchen]

Correction: one giving away beer with a little bit of arsenic in it. Which they have slowly been increasing as people build a bit of a tolerance to it.

[NuSkooler]

No, it feels that way because music is a monthly service, any media is a monthly service cost, backups are monthly service cost, news are a monthly service cost, VPN is a monthly service cost, internet is of course a monthly service cost, password management is a monthly service cost, anti-malware/AV is a monthly service cost, ...this list just goes on and on.

And they want $10/month for unlimited searches full well and knowing $5/300 isn't even a reasonable bracket for half of us.

It's steep, and we're all swimming in in these costs.

$5/unlimited would be more reasonable, but it still piles on all these SaaS costs that everyone now uses. Gotta grow grow grow grow you know. Capitalism is great!

[Ageodene]

> $5/unlimited would be more reasonable

Hell, I'd even take $5/600. 300 is just ridiculously low. I like the service, mind you, but really can't justify paying $10/m (+ tax now) for it.

I should have jumped on the Neeva train when I had the chance. It was 50€/y. The results weren't as good as Kagi's, though. But anyway, Neeva's dead now.

[Freedom2]

> Like, if you didn't have search, would you even be able to use the web?

It was fairly common to use the web before people used Google, or even Altavista.

[nine_k]

The web had such a size that a catalog like Yahoo or Moz could cover a significant part of it. (I remember how Netscape was released, and how cool it was compared to Mosaic.)