8,000 searches costing a dollar, in actual resource use? OK, maybe. Still seems a little high, but maybe. 80? Are they paying someone to manually look things up for you?
Which is probably why search quality is going down. They're rewriting your query to a more common way of saying the same thing, at least according to Google.
You don’t have to answer, but how do you have such a high per search price?
I'd challenge that the cost per search is actually very low. For just 1.25 cents, you can search the entire world wide web with any query, find what you need with no distractions and all that in just 500ms. The value of that search outcome for you can be $10 or even $100. It is probably the most amazing return on investment existing in the world today. Imagine for a second that Google and other search engine didn't exist, and someone offered you this deal today. I'd be you'd take it in a hearbeat. Heck you may even consider paying $1 per search or even $5. So the value is there.
But today this value is anchored in the price of 'free' search. So instead $1 per search sounding like a good deal, we struggle to accept that 1.25 cents is.
We hope that for a portion of people that 1.25 cents per search is going to sound like an amazing deal, especially as this is the only search relationship where the incentives of the information provider are aligned with the incentives of the information consumer.
I don't feel 1 cents per search is a good deal at all, while -logically- it probably will give me more than 1 cent of value out of it. People never thought about how much the knowledge they acquired is worth, most of the time they share it free of charge, people like to share, somes will even pay hosting to share knowledge !
That's why I don't believe in the pay-as-you-go I'm fine with a subscription, I don't pay to have more value out of my search, but because: 1. I dont like ads, I want to support an ad free alternative.
2. I pay for my privacy.
3. Better results will mean less time lost on searching, less frustration.
I never accounted the value I will get out of better search, I looked at the price and felt that I was a bit overpriced for my taste, but I want an ad-free, pro privacy internet.