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0 pointsNextgrid4y ago0 comments

Other people may have different opinions about their personal data.

The advantage Kagi has over Google is the different business model. Google would never for example introduce a "non-commercial" filter as it would go against their advertising-based business model. Kagi doesn't give a shit about ads and will do whatever that keeps its users paying and so has a non-commercial "lens" (as they call it). I'm not sure how good or accurate it is, but it's at least there which is already more than I can say about Google.

Kagi has a feature to prioritize or exclude some domains. Google doesn't have that despite their size, resources and decades of search experience. That makes it pretty clear to me that Google's weakness has nothing to do with experience or resources and thus a new entrant could potentially compete without either.

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sytelus4y ago

If Google went completely add free, they would need to charge $57 per year to entire US population. I bet vast majority of population will rather be willing to endure ads. HN bubble often forgets how small it is relative to whole population.

natpalmer17764y ago

The price point of Kagi is anywhere from $120/yr to $240/yr, based on their current FAQ.

Let's say they manage to take just 1% of Google's daily search traffic, which based on a quick Google search (hah) would be about 35 MILLION search queries. If we do a very very rough ballpark estimate of 50 queries per user, per day, it would be about 700,000 unique users... or between 84,000,000 and 168,000,000 USD/year gross revenue.

Now, do I think it's reasonable to expect them to take 1% of Google's search traffic anytime soon? Probably not. I do however think that the sheer size of this market means there is a LOT of missed opportunity by the incumbents in the market that can be leveraged to create niche products that perform successfully by any other market's standards.

So, even if the HN bubble is small there are other bubbles out there. A LOT of other bubbles out there.

pb74y ago

>which based on a quick Google search (hah) would be about 35 MILLION search queries

Public numbers are a decade old. You're off by an order of magnitude.

NextgridOP4y ago

That's fair enough, but the option should be available for those who are willing to pay. $57 per year sounds like a steal for anyone doing any kind of productivity work with computers.

berkeleyjunk4y ago

I think it is worse. The people who are willing to pay $57 to opt out of ads are probably the most profitable (I am guessing here: no citation available). Seems like a case of Adverse selection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_selection

yissp4y ago

That doesn't seem obvious to me. I'd be more inclined to think anyone willing to pay to avoid ads likely isn't very receptive to advertising in the first place. If someone is so annoyed by ads, they're probably not going to be clicking on them, right?

Cederfjard4y ago

In terms of purchasing power they might look desirable, but surely they’re also likely to be massively overrepresented as users of ad blocking solutions (also pure speculation on my part). That could make them less profitable in practice.

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