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Comment by georgehill | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, ads can be a real pain. Before HNers come in and start criticizing Google, can we have a honest discussion about the best pricing model for search engines these days? Subscription-based search engines like Kagi and Neeva are generating some revenue, but I'm not convinced they'll be profitable in the long run. Kagi is still struggling to pay the dev team's costs [0].

[0]-https://blog.kagi.com/status-update-first-three-months

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Kagi founder here. I am curious why do you think so?

Kagi claims it costs them $1 for every 80 searches[1]. Assuming that is marginal cost, I struggle to see how you're even making enough money to pay your developers.

I've previously had Kagi recommended to me on HN, but I decided not to try it because I know that I personally make well in excess of 800 searches a month, and your ToS states my account can be terminated if "our provision of the Services to you is no longer commercially viable"[2] (which, if this number is accurate is obviously true, as I would just be directly losing Kagi money).

Maybe economics of scale will get that price way down, but in my opinion it needs to be 10x-100x cheaper before Kagi can meaningfully exist as a financially sustainable business for your average Google user.

1: https://kagi.com/faq#cost 2: https://kagi.com/privacy#Terms-of-use

Good questions and thanks for feedback. Since paid search is a new thing, there is a lot of exploration going on, including one with pricing. We are about to change pricing plans very soon based on user feedback and our own unit economics. With the new plans 800/searches month will be around $11/mo and it will include enough margin to potentially make Kagi susitanable long term.

Thanks for replying. Hopefully you can guide me on a question about Kagi.

A privacy warning in Kagi landing's page reads the following: "We do not log or associate searches with an account." But one of the CTA below specifically mentions "search experience tailored to you and your needs". Am I missing something? How do you achieve the latter before the former?

Kagi has features to allow you to set some parameters around your searches like setting certain sites as favored or less common in your searches. There’s a bunch there I’ve never used but I’m guessing that’s what the CTA is referring to (might be wrong though)

We give the users tools to tailor the experience for themselves. For example yu can block websites you do not like, custimize pretty much anything in the way kagi looks or works etc.

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