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Perplexity got ads

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Re: Perplexity got ads

#361

Post by wrasee »

redserk wrote: post #343
wrasee wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

Agree with all of that. I would love for Kagi to be the future of search. Let’s hope that they can do so at $5/month.

My hunch is that they are happy just growing a sustainable business. And I say good for them.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#362

Post by physicsguy »

Aeolun wrote: post #222
wrasee wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely interested. So I went to their site and I have to say it's quite refreshing. But then - a few bucks a month turns out to be $5/month, and that comes with a limit of 300 searches/month. That's an average of just 10 a day and while in practice I probably wouldn't actually hit that limit it's uncomfortably low enough that the added fiction of each search having a tangible cost is just a non-starter. I can't he…

$5 is practically nothing. $2 is just not worth the cost of the CC charge. I think it’s really convenient that you can pay for extra searches, as you never have to worry about actually running out. They also need to be able to pay for the servers that run searches.

Problem isn't that $5 is expensive (in most of the Western World) it's that $5 for the 10 hot tools this month starts to add up to a lot.

The US is also a huge outlier in salaries compared to the rest of the western world.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#363

Post by LunaSea »

nottorp wrote: post #352
LunaSea wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subscription prices are also determined by overal company costs. And until users understand that, they will continue being tracked and shown advertisement.

> are also determined by overal company costs In the average tech case (maybe not Kagi but definitely a lot of others) by managers fighting for dominance by increasing their departments head count. And generally speaking, aren't you supposed to charge what the market will bear? What has that to do with costs?

> In the average tech case (maybe not Kagi but definitely a lot of others) by managers fighting for dominance by increasing their departments head count

Sure, that can happen.

> And generally speaking, aren't you supposed to charge what the market will bear? What has that to do with costs?

Because if you can't recoup your costs you're in the red and will have to close down soon?

Re: Perplexity got ads

#364

Post by throwaway314155 »

heraldgeezer wrote: post #351
throwaway314155 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quality over quantity perhaps? Can't see why you'd want _more_ than about 3-5 sources returned each time. Anything more is information overload and defeats the purpose of being able to vet the claims in a timely manner.

Not if I am looking for something specific like Reddit threads. Anyway. I want more and you.com and perplexity does that so I will use them over chatgtp.

Fair enough!

Re: Perplexity got ads

#365

Post by brewtide »

gjm11 wrote: post #277
pembrook wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except they do. They help connect buyers with needs/wants to sellers with solutions. I know this breaks HNs brain so I don't expect to win this one however. Can ads encourage people to buy stuff they don't need? Yes. Like most things (including humans), they aren't perfectly rational.

I gladly affirm that in principle it is possible for advertisements to be beneficial on net by informing people with needs about how suitable products meet those needs. Now turn off your ad-blocker, look at the next ten ads you see on the internet, and count how many of them fall into that category.

They are just helping you redefine 'need'. Obviously.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#366

Post by asdff »

nunez wrote: post #98
asdff wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair that's been the case since there were food reviews.

But not at this scale. Imagine if every response in this thread was AI generated. Or a Reddit/TripAdvisor/set of Google Maps reviews. Just enough criticism to make you think there's fairness. This is possible today, but gen AI has made/is making this pedestrian to do.

You are right, not at this scale, but it was even worse in the past. The only critic you even could read was whatever food writer landed the job at the paper. And thats what I was getting at, that the old source of truth wasn't really a source of truth at all, but one that is just as liable to be perverted for gain like we fear of the new world and the new patterns for product reviews. One must look into the mirror sometimes and realize a lot of our greatest fears have already manifested into this world, but given that, the damage might not be quite what we fear to expect to come given how we have seemed to survive unscathed so far.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#367

Post by IIsi50MHz »

carlosjobim wrote: post #323
homebrewer wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about Spain, but $5 is enough to sustain me for half a day (I spend roughly $10 a day all things considered). There are many places out here where people have it much worse than we do. I will fret over spending an additional $5 per month for hours (by looking for alternatives, etc). GP is right, much of HN audience is extremely privileged and doesn't even recognize it.

Is somebody extremely privileged because they have $5? Or are you just upset that people would spend $5 differently than you would? If you spend $10 per day, how can $5 be anything to fret about for hours? You're losing more spending your time fretting about it right?

Sometimes, a person might "have more time than money", in which case the 'cost' of spending time may be considerably cheaper than the cost of spending money. I also presume that the fretting was not monotasking.
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