

Ask HN: Would you ever pay to use a search engine? - tima101

HI All, inspired by debate here: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=9960730<p>There are multiple ways to monetize website&#x27;s traffic:
1) advertise,
2) make users subscribe,
3) hybrid (ads for non-paying users),
4) sell or upsell goods to the users.<p>Two questions:<p>1) Will you pay to Google $2.50&#x2F;mo to remove ads (both tagged and hidden)
2) Will you pay to search engine which delivers more relevant results then Google and has no ads (same $2.50&#x2F;mo)?<p>Please explain why. Thanks!
======
klyburke
There are services for people to do online research for you (e.g.
[https://wonderlib.com/](https://wonderlib.com/)), so I think it's fair to pay
for a search engine that directly gives you highly relevant (and as you
suggest, human-curated) results.

~~~
tima101
Whoa, did not know that such services exist. Thanks for link.

~~~
seren
I would say that [https://getmagicnow.com/](https://getmagicnow.com/) could
also be considered as a kind of paid natural language search engine (limited
to paid product or services).

~~~
tima101
Yeah, totally. I thought that Magic is on demand search engine for human
intelligence as well. Not sure that it would easily scale though. Seems like
database would be better than on-demand. Thanks for the insight.

------
stephengillie
Hi

You missed a 5th method, another (very annoying) hybrid: Advertise to
everyone, _maybe_ less to subscribers. The New Yorker is known for this model,
among others.

To answer your poll (clarifying questions inline):

1\. I would be willing to pay Google $30/year to opt-out of AdSense.

-Would I have to be logged in for the opt-out to work?

2\. I would be willing to pay a Google competitor the same $30/year to have
advertising-free results of equivalent quality.

-Where do you find another search engine whose results are _more_ relevant? Do you mean having "non-personalized" results by default?

~~~
tima101
Thanks for reply.

1\. Yes, say logged in with Gmail.

2\. Say, results which are made by both robot-algorithm (like Google) but
further refined with a human intelligence (curators).

------
anonyfox
I'd pay 10€/month for a google alternative. It should rank resources based on
relevancy, not mixed up with any advertising or business-political reasons.
And no filter bubble please (opt-out?).

~~~
tima101
Hah, that's a surprising answer. Thanks for sharing. Why not filter bubble? It
does not do a good job guessing personalized results?

~~~
anonyfox
When you want to investigate about something new to you, you have to trust
what a search engine gives you. When for whatever reason google wants to
influence people, a little modification of search results for specific topics
can make a big difference and push public opinion in any direction.

I prefer to get balanced views from all sights, and not only voices that agree
with whatever i'm already thinking, pushing me further down a mental rabbit
hole.

~~~
tima101
I see. Would you mind giving an example?

~~~
anonyfox
Nope, I won't, since it's basically impossible to prove it from the outside.
But the raw possibility is enough. But I think that finding truly relevant
results without clutter and people gaming the system is much harder than
personalizing results, where one can cheat and find "close enough" results
based on historical data and so on

~~~
tima101
I agree that former is harder. Thanks for the insight.

------
betenoire
I dunno. I hate the idea of personalized ads for privacy reasons... but at the
same time, if ads are inevitable, why not ones I'm interested in?

As for search results, a mix of logged-in-searches for usual topics and
incognito for more unbiased results works well enough for me.

~~~
tima101
Yeah relevant ads are not as bad. Are you willing to pay to remove ads or get
more relevant results?

------
tima101
URL from the debate thread: [http://veekaybee.github.io/who-is-doing-this-to-
my-internet/](http://veekaybee.github.io/who-is-doing-this-to-my-internet/)

------
panglott
It would be hard to get this to consumers, but plenty of other search engines
have a non-advertising business model. ProQuest and EBSCO get their money from
libraries and institutions, for example.

~~~
tima101
Could you please describe main obstacles? Academia is a specific market. Not
sure it would feasible to charge companies to be listed on search engine for
everyone.

