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Perplexity got ads

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Re: Perplexity got ads

#341

Post by omnicognate »

franga2000 wrote: post #199
omnicognate wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get your point. I pay for services wherever I can, including search and AI, and see few adverts online despite not using a blocker. The main source of ads I see is in news articles when following links from places like HN, which is because the news industry hasn't developed the microtransactions mechanism it would need to allow readers to pay while retaining the experience of being able to follow links freely…

I haven't heard many bad things about Youtube Premium on its own, besides all the jokes people were making back when it was called Youtube Red (hahah redtube...). The way they seemingly randomly have a family plan in some countries but not in other is very annoying and the bundling of Youtube Music is problematic from a fair competition standpoint, but that's about it. It's not that expensive for what you get, it rem…

> I haven't heard many bad things about Youtube Premium on its own

Just now on r/popular: https://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/1htc0ec/ill_die_a_slo...

Posts like this come up regularly. The responses seem to have shifted over the last couple of years, with most now pointing out how dumb complaining about ads while refusing to pay is, but there are still plenty of people agreeing, and a strangely angry "how dare you not provide this service free!" vibe to them.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#342

Post by eesmith »

wkat4242 wrote: post #305
pembrook wrote: post #123

Big surprise. It’s almost as if internet 1.0 shook out the way it did for a reason, and for all the complaining about ads, fast forward 25 years and consumers still fundamentally refuse to pay for search. It’s the same reason the phone book was also free and ad supported pre-internet. I don’t know why we can’t accept this reality and why we need to masochistically flog ourselves every time this is proven true over an…

The phone book in my country didn't have ads (well, except for descriptions of the phone company's services). It was just paid by the subscriptions. There was only one state owned phone company.

Here's an example of a US phone book from the 1980s, https://archive.org/details/1981-12-mc-lean-county-phone-boo... .

It has two sections, typically called 'white pages' and 'yellow pages' because the paper for the latter was tinted yellow. The white pages had subscriber phone numbers, listed alphabetically, with no advertising except that one could pay extra to have the entry in bold, to grab attention.

The yellow pages were for business numbers, arranged by topic. A business could buy ad space to put on the same page as the topic.

In the linked-to example, the white and yellow pages were in the same book. In a more populated area, the two would be separate books, and in larger cities even two books for the white pages and one for the yellow.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#343

Post by redserk »

wrasee wrote: post #278
i_am_proteus wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "right way"[0] to use Kagi is the unlimited search tier ($10/mo) and then aggressively rank domains in searches. Within a few weeks, the search quality improves tremendously, because I have filtered out the domains responsible for low-quality results, and up-ranked the domains I find to be most useful. [0]My opinion. Probably true.

I suppose my argument was essentially that $5/month felt on the high side, so I love that the answer is actually to pay $10/month. This is the way. In all seriousness, I am sure you are right and don’t deny the promise on offer. I’d also be willing to pay for search much more so than many other online services of more questionable value. But I just don’t think they’re going to get cut-through at $5, not least $10, in…

I don't agree with the idea that $5 is on the high side.

After infrastructure and DNS, I think it's the most important tool for using the internet (at least for most people in most cases). It's what most people use to actually find information. It saves me uncountable hours each year.

Need to find a phone number to a company? I don't have to guess what their domain is, I just search for " Phone Number" and probably land on an "About Us" page.

Need to find an owners manual to a device? I don't need to browse for 20 minutes on the product vendor's website.

Trying to look up an error in code? I don't have to search Github, StackOverflow, Gitlab, that tiny self-hosted forum for the library throwing an error, and Reddit individually.

And ultimately, ad-supported search presents a conflict of interest: what information should the search engine return to you? A near-exact result you're looking for or advertiser-funded results to be presented first? Whoever provides search has to raise money somehow, and they aren't going to sell ads if the advertiser results are always at the bottom.

Lastly, Hackernews seems primarily geared towards North America/Western Europe/AU(?)/NZ(?). For this area, generally, $5 is not unreasonably expensive.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#344

Post by wkat4242 »

Melatonic wrote: post #327
wkat4242 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about how long, it's about how often you decide not to do it. Which for me is pretty often. $5 is not one coffee here. It's about 4 coffees in a coffee bar. And that $5 is without VAT so that's enough for another coffee :) So basically it's a whole working week of morning coffees. To put it into perspective. This is why I think it has more chance to take off in America than here. Though northern European cou…

That totally makes sense. If we are estimating your purchasing power at 1/4x mine (I'm located in California and make decent money but not tech industry type money) I can see paying 40$ for the unlimited tier being much more of a consideration. What does keep me paying personally though are three things: 1. I use search constantly for my job (and personal life) and Kagi makes me much more efficient compared to Google…

Yes I think that's a good estimate, especially compared to California which is already high on the wage level even by US standards.

I think it's also that for me search isn't a huge deal. I probably could easily get away with the $5 plan, I don't think I do 300 searches a month.

Even when I have computer issues I try to figure them out and searching is more of a last-resort. My goal is to have a deep understanding of how things work. And that pays off too, I have kinda a reputation at work "If you can't figure it out, talk to him".

But yes it's nothing compared to what I spend on hardware and other software (I donate to some FOSS projects I use a lot, like KDE).

However in terms of services I'm very very focused on self-hosting, hence SearXNG appealed to me a lot more than Kagi. Not even because of the cost, but because of the above: I like to deeply understand and be able to control the tech I work with.

Maybe I will use kagi some day, but for now I'm happy with what I have. But yeah the cost for me would be a bigger factor in that decision.

And in terms of coffee: I brew it at home too of course. But for us at work it's not just about the coffee, it's a social moment. Every morning there's a message going around: "We're just going down to our friends" by which they mean the girls in the coffee shop across the road. We then sit outside for 20 minutes taking a cofee and some of us smoking one. It's nice and not as forced as like a "standup" talk.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#345

Post by wkat4242 »

Aeolun wrote: post #339
wkat4242 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about how long, it's about how often you decide not to do it. Which for me is pretty often. $5 is not one coffee here. It's about 4 coffees in a coffee bar. And that $5 is without VAT so that's enough for another coffee :) So basically it's a whole working week of morning coffees. To put it into perspective. This is why I think it has more chance to take off in America than here. Though northern European cou…

So one week of coffees is not worth great search for a month? I dunno, as much as I love coffee I can do without. And I can certainly do without 5 out of every 30 days. I’m not saying you shouldn’t decide against it. Just challenging the assertion that 5 coffees constitutes a large amount of money (I think I can get 7 coffees in Japan for my $5).

No probably not for me. I really don't use search an awful lot. It's not that important to me for my internet use. What I do a lot is read sites like HN here and find things I like and then dig down and keep notes. My notes are higher in my priority and I do for example pay the $4 monthly for Obsidian notes (though I'm considering to set up my own sync server, not really to save costs but to have more understanding and control). And that's while I have OneNote available to me too (but I don't use it anymore because it's terrible especially on Linux where only the web client is available).

But search, it's just not that high in priority in my workflow.

The coffee thing was just to put the Silicon Valley: "It's just one starbucks coffee" into perspective, to show it's not like that all over the world :)

Re: Perplexity got ads

#346

Post by carlosjobim »

wkat4242 wrote: post #345
Aeolun wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So one week of coffees is not worth great search for a month? I dunno, as much as I love coffee I can do without. And I can certainly do without 5 out of every 30 days. I’m not saying you shouldn’t decide against it. Just challenging the assertion that 5 coffees constitutes a large amount of money (I think I can get 7 coffees in Japan for my $5).

No probably not for me. I really don't use search an awful lot. It's not that important to me for my internet use. What I do a lot is read sites like HN here and find things I like and then dig down and keep notes. My notes are higher in my priority and I do for example pay the $4 monthly for Obsidian notes (though I'm considering to set up my own sync server, not really to save costs but to have more understanding a…

Now I understand. You don't want the product and you're not interested in that kind of product. Then of course any price asked is too expensive for your taste. I don't like breakfast cereal. That doesn't mean that they're too expensive, it just means I'm not the customer. But there are people who like the product and to them the price asked is cheap.

When I go to the super market I walk past thousands of products which I'm not interested in. The same for any store or virtual market place. So it's not about $5 being a "considerable" amount.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#347

Post by carlosjobim »

rrr_oh_man wrote: post #297
carlosjobim wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kagi has a very tiny user base and is barely growing. But they're paying their own bills, at least.

…unlike many "growing" "successful" "businesses".

Can't argue that the people don't stay very busy, even if the company is just leaking investor money.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#348

Post by carlosjobim »

asdf147 wrote: post #168
rajup wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can literally pay YouTube to avoid ads, watching the mental gymnastics folks on here do to complain about YouTube Premium is my favorite pastime.

Why would you pay for something that treats you as a product? I would gladly pay for youtube if there was: no paid sponsorships, no ads, no algorythm manipulations, no collection of behavioral information, no clickbaits, no shitty content promoted and so on and so. Basically a service where the side paying is a consumer, not a product. Paying for service that is already extracting value from you in ways that are not…

A well pruned YouTube subscription is right now the highest quality video entertainment and information service in the history of the world. You literally just need to "like and subscribe" to a bunch of high quality videos and YouTube will recommend you a never ending supply of high quality videos. You can then continue to improve your recommendations with the like/dislike buttons.

If you're seeing "shitty content", clickbait and paid sponsorship, it means you haven't told the YouTube algorithm what you want to see. It's just the push of a button.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#349

Post by rdsubhas »

behnamoh wrote: post #24

Makes me wonder if the lowering of prices in this industry is temporary. Currently, the API costs are at an all-time low, but how much of it is subsidized by investor money? Are we going to see increasing prices as the hype goes away and post-nut clarity kicks in the industry?

It's not "this industry" and it has nothing to do with tech. It's how most business endeavors practically work. Someone wants to start, say, a woodworking service or shop? It's perfectly normal and expected to offer discounts for some time to grow. Whoever has time subsidizes their time. Whoever has money subsidizes their money. I honestly don't understand the "surprise" behind what's basic common sense in everyday life.

There is no point in differentiating this like "ah it's on a bigger scale" or something. It's still just pretty basic.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#350

Post by LunaSea »

nottorp wrote: post #247
pembrook wrote: post #123

Big surprise. It’s almost as if internet 1.0 shook out the way it did for a reason, and for all the complaining about ads, fast forward 25 years and consumers still fundamentally refuse to pay for search. It’s the same reason the phone book was also free and ad supported pre-internet. I don’t know why we can’t accept this reality and why we need to masochistically flog ourselves every time this is proven true over an…

> consumers still fundamentally refuse to pay for search. Let's try again. Very few services that ask for "the price of a Starbucks coffee" subscription are actually worth that much to consumers. Search or not search. As long as the service providers don't understand that, they'll be limited in audience to high income techies and won't be able to grow any further.

Subscription prices are also determined by overal company costs.

And until users understand that, they will continue being tracked and shown advertisement.

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