> You're completely discounting the overhead of running a $10/mo service, not to mention the cost of acquisition.
You're entirely misreading what I said. They already have the service and that is an existing cost. To have the ads is an additional cost (and a massive one at that), which could be entirely replaced with a virtually zero-cost purchase form. That's less overhead, not equal -- and certainly not more. Also, I specifically referenced the overhead in my comment, so it's amazing that you would claim I'm disregarding it.
> Google and other free-to-use search engines aren't going away in this scenario, so this hypothetical paid search engine will need to "compete with free"
I literally used Google as an example of how they could make more money without ads, and I didn't say anything at all about them only having a paid option. Also, my conclusion was that paid can't compete with free, so you just reiterated my point in an attempt to "prove me wrong."
> If you're competing with free, you need to offer a better experience than the free service. Cutting the BS sounds good, but is it $10/mo better than the free service?
I said $10/year, not $10/mo. Is $1/mo worth it from a user perspective to remove ads and privacy invasive features? The universal answer to that for any employed individual is yes (even if they've been tricked into thinking otherwise), because all of these companies have repeatedly proven that they can't be trusted to monetize free services without acting incredibly harmful in the process.
> Finally, the biggest issue is that, with the ad model, the minimum Google earns per user is $0.75/mo, but they could make notably more off of negotiated deals for big purchases (eg: Google could sell placements against high-dollar things like real estate for more money) or could just get a windfall from high-frequency months; with your model, the maximum the business can ever earn is $10/mo.
I said that $0.75 was the average, not the minimum, and that was already based on an average of all of the higher and lower term rates. If users are contributing $0.75/mo on average via ads, then a switch to paying $1/mo averages out to more revenue. That's how averages work.
And again, my conclusion was that paid doesn't actually beat free from the amoral business perspective, so all you're doing is agreeing with me while also trying to tell me I'm wrong (based on things nobody said).