But ad-free search products like the one Kagi is building are able to offer much more value and features than their ad-supported counterparts (which are inherinetly restricted by the nature of the business model and their customer being different than their user).
To be clear, I do not think that in two or even five years paid search will rule the world in a way that ad-supported search does now, but I think that enough people will realize that access to information that has only their best interest in mind will make them more productive and competitive in the future world, and make paying for search a much more viable option than today.
Have more thoughts about this in "The age of pagerank is over" blog post if you want to spare a moment. [1]
and there are 2.5 billion monthly active users on Youtube, according to [0].
So about 1% of the userbase are willing to pay for ad-free content.
[0] https://www.globalmediainsight.com/blog/youtube-users-statis...
Seeing social media, for example, go from "fun way to catch up with friends and family" to "pump ads, FUD and FOMO to our users as efficiently and accurately as possible, 24x7x365" has been an incredibly sad experience.
Seeing Google go from "I can type a question and find what I'm looking for" to "I have to append site:reddit.com to every query to avoid SEO-optimized puff pieces because Google can't be trusted" is disheartening.
I really hate having to be so overly aggressive in blocking ads and trackers on my devices because collecting this telemetry is the only way for many Internet companies to survive these days.
It doesn't help that talking about this with non-Internet-savvy people who were hoodwinked into the status quo makes me sound like a stereotypical doomsday cult subscriber.
I really hope the rest of the world agrees with the future you're describing here, Vlad.
Thank you so much for writing this. I'm proud to help support your mission in fixing the Internet.
Even they are moving towards ad now.
No. The commenter you replied to is actually a time traveler sent back from 2025.
HERE BE SOMEONE WITH MONEY
iPhone users are a perfect example of this.
I have never seen a service/industry move from ads to subscription. People will watch as many ads as you throw at them to avoid paying.
For example, even though youtube keeps increasing ads to an annoying level, vast majority of public is willing to grovel through that rather than pay for it. What evidence do you have that makes you think that that will change?
Please don't get me wrong. I admire someone creating a new and different search engine but if you keep growing in size, I believe you will face the same pressures that google/bing/etc faced and go the same route they did. "The king is dead, long live the king" scenario.
PS : remember larry and sergey warned about advertising incentives in their research paper as well but once you see the 9-10-11-12 digit figures on a piece of paper, idealistic morality usually goes out the window.
Ofc this is just my "educated guess at best, speculation at worst". I have a lot less information than you in this field.