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Comment by zetanor | Hacker News Reader

Strangely: "Searches are, unexpectedly, more expensive for us to serve than AI. A user that does only traditional searches (not using Assistant) will cost more on our end than someone using AI + search."

https://kagifeedback.org/d/1338-provide-a-plan-without-ai-fu...

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> A user that does only traditional searches (not using Assistant) will cost more on our end than someone using AI + search.

Unless I am missing something, that appears to be a mathematically impossible claim. They are saying A > A+B, where both A and B are positive values. I suppose it could be that non-AI users do more total searches, and the extras add up. Hmm.

I think their point is that an AI user makes fewer searches on average because AI helps ttem find what they’re looking for faster.

They're likely saying that at equal usage, the user with mixed usage will cost less because the cost of B is lower than A.

how do you quantify equal usage?

How can this be true? Should I not worry about margin compression at Google due to heavy cap-ex requirements anymore? Is this temporary because Kagi got a good deal for tokens? Are they paying through their noses for the Google search API calls? I don't get it.

Because they pay API costs to send the search to SerpApi. I forget exactly what the cost was for them per-search and I'm having little luck finding it, but I know they've published that cost before and I know it's more than a whole cent. By comparison, running a good but not top-tier model to answer the same question might run a small fraction of a cent. Cheaper than a follow up query by the user.

Yeah, that reply is a mildly infuriating, in view of what they're planning.

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