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Comment by Derbasti | Hacker News Reader

I finished my 30 day trial the other week, and went back to DDG. After a few days, I realized I didn't miss anything, so I'll happily stay with DDG. Perhaps I'm not a very discerning searcher. Most of my searches are bang-searches of Wikipedia or CPP or Python anyway.

Still, I'd be fine with supporting a sustainable search engine. $10/more is a bit too steep for my liking, though, measured against the utility I get from it.

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As my income drops in slow periods, I pause subscriptions to many things. The very last two I would be willing to give up are (n-1): YouTube Premium and (n): Kagi.

Switched to nebula when they removed YouTube lite and the price was double. Got no ads on my devices anyway.

For me, YouTube Premium (for family) is so worth it because:

- It removes ads for my kids, which are going to watch YouTube no matter what I do

- It includes YouTube Music, so I don't need a separate Spotify subscription

- It sends money to creators based on what I proportionally spend time watching, rather than based on how valuable of an audience I'm deemed to be when an ad slot is auctioned

- It is a signal that I'm willing to pay for content, and I want platforms and creators to continue offering that option

Rather send money directly to creators rather than filtering it through Google.

People just don't do that. If they did, the state of things wouldn't be the way it is. It's also kinda unfair to creators whose content people consume but just don't pay for in any way, because of a variety of possible reasons (they just don't even think about it, or they don't deem them "worthy" of being paid, or it's about having to go out of their way to pay someone, and then people only paying a limited amount of "chosen" people, etc.)

Firefox (and probably others) allows you to set up custom search engines (like Wikipedia). So when I know I am trying to get to Wikipedia or npm or whatever I just do an @wikipedia and type my search.

I’ve used keyword search for many years, maybe since Netscape. Set it up and type “w thing”, no quotes. Can be a lot shorter.

Yep, I prefer the Firefox keywords for various sites, and to disable search support entirely.

For those who haven't tried this yet: the bookmark for Wikipedia might look something like this:

    Name:    [SEARCH] WIKIPEDIA
    URL:     https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=%s
    Keyword: w

Then, when you want to do a Wikipedia search, go to the URL&search bar, and enter `w` as the first word, followed by the search term, such as `w cats`.

Also, you might want to disable the other search engine and portal page features as much as you can. This requires setting some preferences not on the Preferences pages, so going to `about:config` preferences, to set, e.g., `keyword.enabled` to false.

Note that you control the keywords. So I thought Wikipedia deserved a one-letter keyword. But `a` went to archive.org Wayback Machine (which also meant I could just prefix any URL with `a` and a space), while I made myself spell out `amazon` every time I was in danger of unnecessary consumerism.

Also, there’s a shortcut to make the entry. Right click on the search input of the desired page and select make keyword search.

Pro tip : there is a DuckDuckGo lite version

Feel the same. I liked it during the trial, but not THAT much.

10 dollars is like, a sandwich. Access to your search engine for a month is less useful than a sandwich?

Did you miss the part about them using DDG? They do have access to their search engine.

If the choice were between no search engine or paid search engine, then your point is a good one, but that's not the choice here.

I'm a very happy Kagi subscriber btw. I think it's worth the money. I love the personal uprank/downrank feature and Quick Answers personally and get a lot of value from them. But if I didn't use those it might not be worth it to me either.

> 10 dollars is like, a sandwich

In Silicon Valley?

Does Kagi only want to sell to techbros?

How much can a bana- er, sandwich cost?

I just checked McDonalds in my hometown in Idaho. A Big Mac is $5.99 for just the sandwich and $10.68 for a meal. A Double Quarter Pounder is $8.29 for just a sandwich.

McDonalds is definitely on the cheap side so $10.00 seems like a reasonable estimate of “sandwich money”.

No need to invoke tech bros or silicon valley. Certainly no need to invent a motive.

Nice troll. A footlong Ultimate BMT is $11.29 in Wichita before taxes (I just checked).

Kagi builds an excellent product for a very fair price. Direct your ire elsewhere.

A footlong is rather big for an average sandwich. Half of that is easily a large sandwich by themselves. So the cost for two large sandwiches.

Eating a sandwich over two sittings is easier than using 1 month subscription over two months, at least in my country.

$10 is a reasonable price for a sandwich in any decent sandwich shop in the US.

I live in Mississippi, crappiest economy in the nation. I assume people are thinking they meant the cost of a homemade bologna sandwich or something, otherwise this conversation is pretty absurd.

I'm in the capital city of Germany, a sandwich in the bakery around the corner is about 3-4 euros.

Wish I could say I was surprised. I bet the bread is better too.

^ In America, you have to remember that we overpay for crappier food.

Depends. Not always.

But there is this one shop selling shawarma sandwich made to fresh bread that costs 3.90€. And that is already a good lunch.

A döner sandwich can cost 2.90€ the cheapest.

Bakeries have baguettes with cheese and ham for 4-5 euros.

If you go to Mitte, a döner can already be 6-9 euros. And that is expensive.

Food is currently very, very expensive in the US.

Went to Europe a few years ago and I remembered previously that food prices in Europe were high. But this last time, I noticed they were consistently ~5 euro/dollars less than it would be in the US. I was pleasantly surprised.

It’s only gotten worse here. Typical restaurant entree is maybe 17 dollars. Fast food is now about 12 dollars for a meal. At least in DFW Texas.

I suspect the US definition of sandwich is different to the European one, but genuinely not sure. Curious — can someone give me a few examples describing the $10 sandwiches you get in the US? Are we talking warm, ordered off a menu, good quality meat, filling enough to serve as a meal?

This whole conversation has reminded me of the $5 milkshake conversation in Pulp Fiction.

I’ve signed up for the Kagi trial, so far I’m liking it. Breath of fresh air compared to the free ones. Best result, first position.

No, but they also don't wanna sell to the entire planet. There's definitely a market for a 10$ search engine, since it doesn't make money by maximizing eyeballs it doesn't have to cater to the planet.

Not everyone has a cooled mattress, AC, car etc.. "Are all those things only for techbros"?

$10 is many sandwiches.

It’s also less than a single sandwich. Not sure how “it depends on the sandwich” adds to the conversation. The point still remains.

The point they were making is: look, it's so cheap it's the cost of one sandwich.

Does that point still stand if it's not the cost of one sandwich, unless you're paying a fortune for a sandwich?

If a diff shop has a sandwich that is 90% as good and is free but has ads plastered all over the walls, I will probably take the free sandwich.

The cost of a sandwich ranges beyond $0.50 to $200.00. It depends on the sandwich adds about as much to the conversation as "it costs less than a sandwich".

And to be clear by "beyond" I mean some sandwiches cost less than $0.50, and some sandwiches cost more than $200.00

"It's one banana, Michael. What could it cost, $10?"

The thing is, subscriptions do add up. Lots of folks are carrying a bunch of $10 a month subscriptions that individually are no big but when added up start tacking on $100-$200 a month to their bills.

I'm a big proponent of paying for things instead of using ad-supported things, so I don't mind paying for Kagi -- but I also have subscriptions and other monthly payments that make me think hard before signing up for a new one. $10 a month for Kagi, $10 for a webcomic Patreon, $5 for a musician's Patreon, $10 a month to support Mastodon.social, $10 a month to Internet Archive, and an assortment of other monthly (or yearly) subs/payments... plus streaming, plus ... it adds up.

Ideally if more people were supporting these things the monthly charges could be less -- e.g., if Kagi had more users their monthly could be $5 instead -- but pricing and getting people to pony up is hard.

I think it’s important to divide your subscriptions into different categories to make wise choices. My categories are utility, tools, entertainment, education, and 501c.

I have no problem paying for tools if the value is there, so I minimize my spending in other categories. Every quarter I review subscriptions, switch some from monthly to yearly to save money, cancel some, adjust levels on others.

If your point is that buying many things can add up to be expensive...yes? At what price point would you stop saying that is true? If it's 2 dollars someone would be listing all the things they buy for 2 dollars that add up to get expensive. Let's leave out the price of all our only fans subscriptions and consider the thing we're talking about

Kagi isn't competing against no access to a search engine, it's competing against Google, DDG, etc etc which are free (or more specifically, you could say ads are the cost).

Kagi needs to not just be worth $10, but also worth ($10 - ads) more than the alternatives.

It is EASILY worth that. It’s a tool that I use constantly every day for work and at home. I literally never fall back to using Google anymore. Google results turned to doggie doo years ago and getting what I need at the top of the list again is worth every penny. Kagi is like Google from 10 years ago if they had kept optimizing it for quality instead of enshitifying it to increase revenue.

I'm glad it provided you with that much value! When I gave Kagi a try, the results weren't as impactful for me, so paying for the service didn't make sense. Things have different values to different people, and that's okay.

I got a family subscription after saving on hotel bookings after using google, which impressed my wife. I like it for my children because not only does it return age appropriate results, there is no advertising targeting children. It works out $20/month for 6 people, a Christmas present for my sisters, mother and nephew that keeps giving.

Agreed. I've been a subscriber for over two years. At first the depth of search results was not as good as Google's but I used Kagi nonetheless because of the no-ad policy. Today, the results are just as good as Google's and still no ad, making Kagi a no-brainer in my eyes.

It always seems like there's no one less willing to pay for software than those who create it for a living

Pretty sure Kagi’s users are disproportionately software workers by a large margin, though.

It's a sandwich _subscription_. If you keep thinking like that, it's death by a thousand cuts.

I think that's sort of the nature of sandwiches. You have to keep paying for them if you want to keep eating them.

The nature of subscriptions is that you keep paying for them forever whether you're eating them or not. Maybe you forgot about your sandwiches and they're just piling up on your doorstep.

Kagi implemented automatic pausing on your subscription if you don't use it, so it's actually not the same here.

I think Kagi being nice is not a valid argument for accepting lots of low-cost subscriptions in your life.

Sure, but Kagi is one of the ones you'll get the value back out of. And if you don't use it you don't pay.

I only subscribe to Spotify, YouTube and Kagi as "online services". Video media I happily sail the seas for and I don't mind evil megacorps "losing" money on my behalf.

Ok, well I guess it's a good thing we're talking about kagi and not all your subscriptions, then.

For a myriad of reasons I'm cutting back on American subscriptions (am European). Kagi has a soft spot near my heart, so it is likely one of those going out last.

If sandwiches are $10 for you and not worth much, might I ask you to support my subscription instead? Because when I make a sandwich myself, the costs are approx 0,50 EUR, and that is the type of food I can afford.

It is the same with this 'it is only a cup of coffee' or 'only a beer'. I don't drink beer, I do drink coffee, but when I did drink beer the special beers were lower than the prices of the ones you pay in pubs. As for coffee, it just shows you're from San Francisco or something, cause we got free coffee at work in our culture here.

Moreover, there's enough people in this world for whom $10 a month is a huge deal, and all your comment shows is that you're either unaware of such or simply don't care.

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