This is a pretty feeble argument for something, especially for a product where the user perception is that it should be free, and there exist multiple free options already.
While "one hour of work" might not seem a lot, a different way of looking at that is that for most people there are 160 hours of work in a month, and so this thing needs to be worth 1/160th of their life.
It's not so hard to make that choice for a couple of things that are of obvious value, but when they start adding up in your life for basic things, people will question the value of it to them, and I'd argue for most people, search just isn't worth that much to them when there are so many good free options.
You should still use the website's search function first. Github issues/SO search often turns up results that google will ignore.
$10 a month is less than one lost hour of work.
I hope they price it around there somewhere so that many will use it but even at $20 it is a no-brainer for me.
The results are in another league compared to what I get elsewhere and by now it also feels like an insult every time I realize Google has altered my query: do you guys really think I don't know what I am doing?
Google probably works better for illiterate people these days, but in the process they have alienated me. I have lost too many hours searching for things I knew used to be there only to be ignored and corrected by their AI. It is rather patronizing at this point.