
How much would you pay to keep using Google? - denzil_correa
https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2018/04/daily-chart-16
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Jun8
"Search engines appear to be especially valuable: consumers surveyed said that
they would have to be paid $17,500 to forgo their use for a year." So the
title is using "Google" as a generic name for a search engine cf. Kleenex.
Which is a pity because I really would like to know how much people would pay
to _stick with_ Google as opposed to another search engine, e.g. DDG. For me,
this is next to nil!

~~~
space_fountain
Definitely not nil for me. DDG still seems to struggle at looking up basic
programing related information. Is that not the case for you?

~~~
simias
I've been using DDG for a few years now and I have the reflex to immediately
add "!g" after a query if I don't find what I'm looking for in the first
screen of results. Nowadays I notice more and more that when DDG doesn't find
what I'm looking for then google often doesn't either. I think the duck is
pretty mature now, at least for my use cases.

That being said I don't fool myself, DDG is free which means that if it ever
becomes really mainstream it's going to turn "evil" at some point in order to
monetize the users one way or an other. Let me pay for your bloody service,
add a few gizmo premium features if you have to. I want to be the client, not
the product.

~~~
kristianc
People forget that Google was an enormously profitable business even when the
tracking part of its operation was in its infancy. Search ads sold by intent
will always be valuable

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todd3834
Whenever I use a search engine other than Google and I don’t get the results I
want my thought is “I bet Google would have found it”. When I use Google and I
don’t get the results I want my thought is “I probably didn’t type the right
query for this”. For me this is the biggest challenge any time I’ve tried
something else.

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o_____________o
> One way to quantify how much these internet services are worth is by asking
> people how much money they would have to be paid to forgo using them for a
> year.

This would inspire much larger numbers than "how much would you pay to use
this service if no free alternatives were available"

~~~
schoen
Maybe this is a form of loss aversion?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion)

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cabaalis
"How much protection money would you pay google to not: (1) track you on just
about every site you visit, (2) know exactly where you are at all times
because of that little GPS you carry around with you, (3) tie-in your
purchases from brick and mortars to identify what you like to buy, (4)
maintain a full history of things you have been interested in (searched for)
so they can market stuff to you"

For #1, I am hoping that the tracking blocker plugin I use has already done
this.

For #2, I've tried disabling the tracking stuff on my phone and it basically
completely hamstrings the device's built-in assistant to the point of being
useless. So I don't know a way around this one.

For #3, "May I have a phone number or email for your purchase?" "No, you may
not."

For #4, I've disabled search history to the best of my knowledge, but I don't
for one minute think they are not still using it internally.

I would not pay Google. I would switch to a search engine of comparable
quality that sells ads based upon what was immediately searched for, and not
based upon their tracking and identification scheme. I like the idea of
DuckDuckGo but I haven't gotten the same quality yet.

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gtirloni
Would Google have reached today's size if it had charged from day one?

I would gladly pay for Google Search as I can't do my job without it. But what
additional features would they offer when 1) there's growing privacy concerns
and legislation coming (so not using your personal data isn't doable and/or
will be required anyway) and 2) they pretty much offer everything for free
today (and it'd be a downgrade if they downscale free users and made people
pay for something they already get for free!).

It's a tough spot to be if you're thinking about an alternative to ads.

~~~
gaius
_I would gladly pay for Google Search as I can 't do my job without it._

We programmed before Google. And it was more fun and satisfying too. A real
craft, not a cut’n’paste-fest

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VectorLock
$17.5k/year for Google? I'd probably go more. I can't even fathom how much
it'd hamstring me professionally to not be able to use Google.

~~~
clairity
really? you wouldn't just buy a few hundred dollars worth of books like we did
back in the day before search?

~~~
VectorLock
I'd survive but I wouldn't go back to it except in the most dire of
circumstances.

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bitL
$10/month with zero tracking & ads, and end-to-end encryption.

~~~
gizmo385
By end-to-end encryption are you just talking about HTTPS in this situation?

~~~
bitL
GMail like ProtonMail/Tutamail with proper asymmetric crypto. GDrive with the
possibility to encrypt on the client side even if it hurts de-duplication
(maybe for extra $).

~~~
igetspam
See: virtru

Full disclosure: I work there but I work there because they do this. I left my
last place because I wanted to be on this side of the argument.

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gruez
something's not right about this survey

>Survey respondents said that they would have to be paid $3,600 to give up
internet maps for a year

is the convenience of internet maps over satnav, desktop offline maps (they
used to be a thing!), and paper maps really worth thousands of dollars? and
what about the $17k figure for forgoing google? that's more than half the us
adult median income! surely google isn't that convenient. I'm guessing they
either surveyed _very_ affluent people, or the respondents greatly
overestimated

~~~
Klathmon
I don't think that number is overly large.

Take a question like "how much would you have to be paid to use an outhouse
for a year"? Sure, it would be inconvenient, but it not like it would
monumentally change someone's life.

Still, I'd guess my number for the outhouse question would be over $50,000
possibly more.

~~~
leadingthenet
Would it really? I think that just makes you out of touch, or really affluent,
as said before.

Frankly, I'm willing to bet serious money that given the choice between 50,000
cash right now, and an in-door toiled, the vast, overwhelming, majority of the
world would not choose the latter.

~~~
Klathmon
For me, yes. All the money in the world isn't worth it if my day to day life
gets worse.

I don't think it's that I'm really affluent, but more than I value some things
more than money. I have a roof over my head and food on the table, so outside
of that my goal is to lead a happy life. I don't think a few tens of thousands
of dollars would make me happier than using an indoor bathroom, or using
Google does.

~~~
leadingthenet
It's just that I don't think you realise that 50K is more than most people
make in a year. For some people, even Europeans, it could easily mean
doubling, or tripling their salary for a year. That's not just "a few tens of
thousands of dollars", that's literally enough to ensure an easier life for a
few years. Which is why I think you don't even realise it, but you're affluent
(compared to world standards).

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parliament32
The title doesn't match the article ("Google" is not the same as "internet
search engines").

If we're talking about Google specifically, zero, because I've been trying to
un-googlify my life for a few years now and I'm comfortable enough with my
alternatives. If all of Google shut down today, the only thing I'd really miss
is Google Maps -- both for navigation and the ratings/review system.

------
WhompingWindows
What's wrong with Google trying to crowdsource its funding? Rather than show
an ad to everyone for a fraction of a cent, maybe a fraction of users would be
willing to pay a cent for each search, on average? I'd pay 500 cents a month
to cover the nearly 10 daily searches I perform, if it meant that no one's
data was being gathered and mined.

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zapita
Have we reached a consensus that asking the question "how much would you pay
to keep using Google" is an accurate method for deciding how valuable Google
is to society?

To me it seems like a flawed and simplistic approach, which will always make
Google seem more valuable than it actually is, because it assumes that in the
absence of Google, no alternative products and services would have appeared
into the world and provided more value than Google ever has. It frames the
question as "Google or nothing".

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dawnerd
Well considering I pay almost 50 a month for gsuite I’d say that.

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Zigurd
I used Lexis before there was AltaVista, though I did not pay for it directly.
I used AltaVista before there was Google. I'm confident I'd pay to continue
using Google. $10/month would be a no-brainer, which is I think much higher
than Google's current ARPU.

Who was the business genius who starved AltaVista? I don't mean who pulled the
plug. I mean who under-resourced it so that, in it's final years, it was too
late to compete with even a nascent Google.

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colordrops
The article isn't directly about privacy, but there is an implication about
the value of your personal data. I'm not convinced that they'd stop abusing
private information even if it were a paid for service. There are plenty of
examples of privacy issues with subscription based services.

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xealgo
I already pay monthly for extra drive storage and I buy tons of media from
Google Play. I donate to a few sites including wikipedia and khan academy. I
wouldn't really mind paying a small fee for other google services such as
gmail.

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kalleboo
Ironically Google Search is probably the one product that could sustain itself
on ads based only on what you put in that search field without any kind of
tracking. I'm fine with Google Search ads like that.

~~~
ForHackernews
That's how DuckDuckGo ads work.

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matiasow
Google has a record of our searches, our email, our contacts, most of the
cellphones in the world, in some cases a microphone within our houses... and
they also want money?

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hartator
It’s not the same thing as “human” access, but, for bot acces, pricing is
around $0.01 per request for a JSON access to search results. Ref:
[https://serpapi.com/#pricing](https://serpapi.com/#pricing)

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james_pm
How much would you pay me to start using Google?

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gaius
Zero. I am already 100% on DDG or Bing

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Spooky23
For no ads/tracking, $50/mo.

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elorant
I'd gladly pay $100-$200 annually for search as long as they stopped profiling
and tracking me all over the web with their ads.

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ecesena
With $5/mo + a domain, so total of $72/y, you can use G apps for business.

~~~
ecesena
I don't understand why I'm getting downvoted, it's a serious statement, you
can already upgrade to get a service with the business ToS, which includes
different privacy treatment.

Personally, other than my work email, I still have a business account from my
previous startup when google apps was free. No ads, less tracking, a joy. My
only regret is that as of today you can't enable Advanced Protection on the
business accounts.

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moltar
$99/mo

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internetman55
Free 99

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originalsimba
Lol, a better question is "How much would you pay to eliminate google from
your life forever." because why the hell would I ever give someone money to
spy on my personal life?

This kind of thing really makes me question how capable people are of grasping
how completely they are being exploited and taken advantage of. Google should
be paying us for the use of our data. How did we get to this point where
humans think it is their purpose to be juiced for money by faceless
corporations until they die?

And now we can pay for the privilege!!! lol.

~~~
privong
> because why the hell would I ever give someone money to spy on my personal
> life?

I think the idea is that if you were paying them, they wouldn't be spying on
you because you've become the customer and not the product.

~~~
originalsimba
I think that idea has been proven wrong in every single application of it in
the entire history of human activities. There is not a single example anywhere
that anyone can point to, where someone afforded that level of trust lived up
to their responsibilities.

I invite you to cite some examples which prove my hypothesis wrong. But
history would suggest that we should never, ever, ever trust _anyone_ in that
particular way.

