Google isn’t what it used to be, but the free alternatives like DuckDuckGo aren’t really that great. Given how vital a good search engine has been to make any use of the internet since the late 90s, I think it’s not unreasonable to offer quality search at a reasonable price.

I’m not aware of any paid-for search engines, and I’m not sure what they could charge for without seeming greedy. Perhaps have a free tier that limits you to so many searches per day and a paid tier with unlimited searches and another with API access or something. The key would be to have a good-better-best system that makes everyone feel they’re getting a reasonable product for what they’re paying while keeping the experience serviceable for free riders.

Email is similar. While it’s not too hard to set up a bare SMTP server, a bare SMTP server will get you absolutely nowhere because every reputable email service will flag it as spam. The hard part is making the server pass all the sniff tests that other services use. You also cannot self-host because residential ISPs block port 25, again as a spam prevention mechanism.

I pay for Proton, not because I trust them per se, indeed the more a company trumpets about how secure and anonymous they are the more suspicious I get. But I trust them more than I trust Google and that’s what matters.

  • seathruEnglish
    22·
    15 days ago

    As long as it’s fairly priced with proper privacy, definitely.

    kagi.com is a paid search engine like you describe.

  • chazwhiz@lemmy.worldEnglish
    19·
    15 days ago

    I pay for Kagi Search, it’s awesome. It’s got a ton of useful features you’d never see in advertising-based search engines, like the ability to up and down rank sites.

  • LeapSecond@lemmy.zip
    13·
    15 days ago

    Email yes but only with my own domain so I can change providers if the price changes.

    I wouldn’t pay for anything I’d prefer to keep anonymous and that includes search.

    • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      15 days ago

      How is your email not flagged as spam? Last time I ran my own email/domain, I could hardly deliver anything. Been 10-years though and I’ve learned more about best practices. Can it be done now?

      • nao@sh.itjust.works
        3·
        15 days ago

        Running your own SMTP is still going to be tough. But you can use a mail provider that lets you use your own domain, then you can use their SMTP which should not get flagged as easily.

      • LeapSecond@lemmy.zip
        1·
        14 days ago

        I haven’t done it myself but know people who do. If you use a known provider and only the domain is yours I wouldn’t expect it to be blocked as companies also use their own domain for their email.

  • Leraje@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    101·
    15 days ago

    For email, yes. For search, not until the subscription engines like Kagi go open source (maybe Kagi are and I just missed it but I can’t see a link to a repo on their website).

    I have no objections to paying for a service but I am long past just trusting software. As for kagi in particular, $10 (plus tax) per month for unlimited search is a ridiculous price.

  • DesertCreosote@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    6·
    15 days ago

    Yep. I switched to Kagi a bit over a year ago, which is paid search. And I pay for my email through Migadu; I thought about hosting it myself but honestly it seemed like more potential hassle than I wanted to deal with.

  • WhatGodIsMadeOf@feddit.org
    5·
    15 days ago

    Can you have a good search engine anymore? You can get rid of ads but now the fact SEO marketing killed internet searches.

    • early_riser@lemmy.worldOP
      5·
      15 days ago

      I hadn’t thought of SEO as a contributing factor to the decline of the search experience, but it absolutely makes sense. To some degree I think SEO is actually GEO (Google’s Engine Optimization) but if some other platform, even a paid one that isn’t incentivized to weigh sponsored content higher, became dominant SEO would just pivot to minmaxing for that platform instead.

      Incidentally, there’s a search engine called wiby.org that only indexes sites that don’t use Javascript, which in practice makes it a great web 1.0 search engine.

  • SethranKada@lemmy.caEnglish
    4·
    15 days ago

    I pay for proton mail, but selfhost my own meta-search engine. Its not as pure as as one that crawls the web on its own, but the ones that do aren’t developed enough for everyday use in my opinion.

  • AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zip
    3·
    15 days ago

    Not doing it for search engines currently, but I am absolutely doing it for a VPN ( Proton ) for the bonus of having better drive and email attached.

    I will agree with you on trusting Proton more than google and how suspicious Proton can seem.