Google is not a search engine. It’s an advertising service. Their whole business model revolves around a critical mass of eyeballs, which flock to free services. This will never happen for the average user.
As the saying goes- if the service is free, you’re not the customer.
If you say you’d pay for a search engine. Oof. Guys we used to just link useful things at the end of our blog posts and on our myspace pages. Then search engines came in and we didn’t have to. Then they killed the SEO placement of blogs. Now you can’t find anything useful unless you try their AI. The whole business model is convincing us we need them while they make the internet less efficient to scroll through.
I’ve recently started paying for unlimited searches over on Kagi, and I’m very happy with the results so far. I’d gladly pay if it meant less search cruft and higher result quality, but sadly Google’s just been going downhill for quite a while now.
Its a big black box with an unquantifiable improvement in quality, and I have no particular inclination to sign of for yet another subscription service. Particularly when I already watch my existing services creep up in price year after year.
That’s before I even get into shit like standard utilities. My electricity bill last month was $500, almost entirely based on the Texas AC bill. Bro, who has another $10/mo to spend on Newoogle when I’m maxed out just keeping the lights on?
It’s unquantifiable, yes, possibly even placebo at times, but I think of it as paying for the features on top of search. I particularly find being able to create and adopt a search “lens” / focus and the ability to (de)prioritise domains very useful for my situation and needs.
That being said, I totally agree with your sentiment. I also only have limited subscriptions I can practically maintain, and I feel like this one’s earned it’s place well enough. To each their own I guess.
Image Transcription:
A white page with black text. On the top left is the Google logo. Underneath is text reading:
"UH OH!
“You’ve used all 75 of your daily free searches!. You’re currently using Google Lite for infinite searches, please consider subscribing to Google Premium.”
On the right side is a digital drawing of a bulldog standing like a human with its right forepaw on its hip and its left forepaw holding a pair of binoculars to its eyes. Underneath the dog is text reading:
“Get one month of Google Premium for $14.99 AUD!”
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