Implement regional pricing

ArunSudarsan

Thanks @Dustin for the reply! Appreciate the response, and looking forward to continuing as a Kagi member 🙂 All the best for the future.

bon

"Value add" is just marketing speak though. Every feature cosfs money to implement, including AI, and it gets passed along to the user.

77fruitsnack

Vlad 1.5c per search is still our go to number. It is not just a search anymore, but a significant number of queries (quickly approaching 50%) we see these days are 'quick answer' with people either adding question mark to the end of query or triggering it directly. Which means now the cost of one 'search' is search results plus token cost.

Dustin value-add is definitely a misleading way of putting it, going by this comment. Supposedly, would this access to the models (specifically in 'quick answer's) not be a large part of the current operating cost? Forget implementations or optional features, this would mean that including quick answers is an operating cost on the magnitude of the search functionality itself, just on a per-token basis.

I think if anything, that comment points towards an AI-free tier being very helpful. Personally I think that would also be a good marketing boost for the target audience as more and more people want to be able to get away from the negatives of AI in the future. For many customers looking for google-alternatives, it may be more attractive to see "AI-free," whereas "AI model included at no extra cost" is in fact a dealbreaker.

carl

77fruitsnack Personally I think that would also be a good marketing boost for the target audience

Are privacy minded IT people the target audience of Kagi? If that's the case, then that's a shame, because Kagi has the potential to be very useful for all kinds of people, not just a very tiny niche.

This might be the audience Kagi has right now, but they've also never made any attempt to attract other groups of users. A company like for example Apple decided to try to appeal to every kind of user, and they've had great success with that approach. They could have chosen to stay with their niche users like graphic designers and such, but they choose a grander perspective. So that's why I think Kagi is right to have AI offerings, because most people want it and use it.

77fruitsnack

carl Hey just wanted to let you know I appreciate you taking the time to leave a reply. Unfortunately I will not be responding to or considering your commentary going forward, because I have a religious and community commitment to adhere to. Thank you

Gredharm

carl How do you convince ordinary people to pay money for search? I struggle convincing people to install uBlock Origin, or Brave browser, both of which are free. Linux has been free forever and yet people pay Microsoft to give them spyware and call it an OS.

Businesses and some ordinary people MAY be willing to pay for better search, with other features like AI as well, and Mail when it comes. But the offering is an extremely hard sell to ordinary people. Not to mention the inconvenience of having to login on each browser you use, to use search. It is ultimately in its current state, a niche tool.

As for regional pricing, the thing to note with say Spotify, is that the main cost of music is the license and they get cheaper licences from the publishers to make it possible to offer discounts in some countries. The choice is make no money at all from those places, or give a discount and make some money at least (and maybe eventually if the country gets richer, have a ready market there to exploit in the future).

I don't see how it would be anything other than pure charity if some countries got discounted pricing, basically just a tax on those living in better off countries.

carl

Gredharm

Depends on what you mean by "ordinary". If you mean the majority of people, no you can never convince them to pay for search. Kagi is a niche product, but the niche could be a hundred times bigger than just IT people. There are whole swatches of the population who needs or wants a high quality search engine, even if they don't care about online privacy or Arch Linux.

In the beginning only engineers had computers, now everybody has a computer. Because they need or want it for writing, for accounting, for media creation and editing, for playing games, for connecting with people, and so on.

There are tens of millions of knowledge workers who would benefit professionally from Kagi, and there are probably just as many people who would want to pay for it just for the convenience and the delight of information and knowledge.

And today there's nothing strange for ordinary people to have subscriptions to pay for software, it's easier than ever. According to Apple, their app store generates $1.3 trillion in annual sales for developers. Making an iOS Kagi app would be the single best way for Kagi to expand their customer base greatly. That also removes the inconvenience of logging in and installing weird plugins to hack your iPhone etc.

tux0r

Gredharm Linux has been free forever

carl In the beginning only engineers had computers

In the beginning, only secretaries had computers.

marc-eu

tux0r In the beginning, only secretaries had computers.

First define what a computer is.

You could argue that the first computers were used in the early 19th century.

The first "modern" computer was build and used by Vannevar Bush, which was an engineer.

tux0r

marc-eu The first "modern" computer was build and used by Vannevar Bush

No.

marc-eu

tux0r No.

Yes.

tux0r

Where can I find the device built and used by Vannevar Bush? The link you sent does not mention one that actually existed.

laiz

@marc-eu @tux0r please stay on topic. Since this is a relatively popular submission, some people have update notifications enabled for it, meaning every single one of your off-topic messages results in them being notified for no good reason.

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