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Fair Pricing

kagi.com

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Re: Fair Pricing

#491

Post by bayindirh »

fastball wrote: post #331
bayindirh wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. Maybe we shouldn't live in a world which puts profits and companies over people and a qualitatively better world. Hard questions.

The status quo is equal footing. Profits and companies are not being put over people when you require people to cancel a subscription that they created. To claim that is to assign almost zero agency to "people". Forcing companies to do this would absolutely be putting people over profits and companies, however.

> The status quo is equal footing.

Depends. When you remove the "1-click cancel" mandate, it's profits over people, for example.

We had this. You had to fax the company a petition for cancellation before 7 to 2 days to renewal, and call them too to set this in motion. If you fail, you can try next year. Now, they have to integrate with e-gov, and I can cancel my membership from e-gov with one click.

If the integration fails, it's their head under the guillotine, not mine.

I don't think "people over profits" a bad approach. We don't live to feed corporations to feed us junk in return. Corporations shall be there for us improve our lives, if we let them. We are not their slaves.

Re: Fair Pricing

#492

Post by bobdvb »

ethbr1 wrote: post #336
joseda-hg wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a separate cash flow problem on doing this, a big chuck of the expected revenue comes from people that setup the subscription and forget about it I tend to care lot less on keeping something like dropout even if I don't use it all the time (I like to think I contribute keeping it afloat, and watch it whenever), but I cancel other subscriptions a lot more aggresively (I've unsubbed/resubbed to Gamepass plenty…

It's an interesting point, because it gets to when streaming services' content costs are paid. Are they upfront? Or do they pay per view royalties at the end of a streaming period? Or likely mix of both, varying by each piece of content terms? Hypothetically, if a streaming service structured most of their obligations in the form of post-view true-up's, they wouldn't have any problem doing this. And could make bank o…

For movies and series, there's a process called "Minimum Commit" where the media companies have to commit to spend $X for a bundle of content that includes both the content you want to sell and a random selection of crap to pad out the offering. Then it depends on the deal, but often the amount that each item is watched then contributes to the royalties cost. The relative exclusivity you might want will then dictate the overall cost and royalties returned.

For sports it's different, typically you bid for the right to own a geographic market and the games are sometimes split into bundles where you can bid for one or all bundles depending on how deep your pockets are. You'll then get to keep exclusive or non-exclusive rights for a certain number of years. You'll then pay annually/quarterly for that right at the total bid package for the term of the deal (e.g. 5 years). Depending on the contract you might be able to re-sell that right to other companies as well, which dilutes your audience, but may increase the distribution overall.

Then aside from the rights, you end up paying infrastructure costs both fixed and variable. You also generally commit to CDN capacity for distribution based on a forecast of how much you think your customers will watch in any quarter.

Re: Fair Pricing

#493

Post by pseudocomposer »

nonethewiser wrote: post #374
pseudocomposer wrote: post #304

This is a nice way to convince people to dip into the Kagi ecosystem. I use Kagi full-time, by default in all my browsers and love it! So this won’t save me a dime (which is still totally cool). It would be nice if they implemented it (or some metered pricing) for the extra-cost AI/LLM features, though (since I pay for them but rarely, if ever, use them). I also really like this model for subscription services in gen…

Its good and they deserve credit for it. Let me be clear on that. Now, wouldnt it be even better to implement usage based pricing with a maximum that's equal to the current subscription? I dont know the Kagi details. Say you pay 10/month and each search is $0.02. You pay max(search_count * 0.02, 10). I guess the logic is much simpler for their current system. It's 10/month, period. Then if you didnt search anything y…

I think metered pricing makes sense for a service that's $10/mo (which the base Kagi w/ AI features is).

However, Kagi search unlimited is $5/mo. And, especially because of the whole "payment providers taking their cut" thing, I'd argue for services that are $5/mo or under, metered pricing doesn't really make sense.

Finally, I'd argue that this approach has other advantages over metering, even for higher-cost services:

* It's easier for devs to implement. Just one search needs to be recorded a month for an audit trail, rather than all search history.

* Keeping a search history for users is not needed at all, really (or, again, at most, one search per month). It's much better for user privacy.

* Most countries/states would have much more luck passing legislation forcing companies to implement this than metering, as well as enforcing it.

Re: Fair Pricing

#495

Post by dmos62 »

promiseofbeans wrote: post #309
dmos62 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first thought. I'd think that first N searches being free each month would fix that for me. Paying for the full month for 1 search feels off, but paying the same for 10 searches dilutes the feeling by factor of 10.

But then it becomes a question of where exactly draw the line? And if you're going to do that, why not just charge per search so that you're not wasting money on searches you aren't using? Now you just have metered billing. We've seen how that plays out with cloud computing: a few people wayyyy overpay and subsidise a lot of people on the free/cheap tiers

10 free searches a month would work well for me, I think. A small free tier might be enough to get me to pay for Kagi. Currently I'm just not sure I'm missing anything and I don't have a way to test that, last I checked.

Re: Fair Pricing

#496

Post by troupo »

yellowapple wrote: post #461
troupo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that problem would've been moot if they were prohibited from charging me for months I didn't use it No, the problem would be moot if the cancellation process was as easy as the sign up process. And I think the US finally got that law

Even if I'd simply "forgotten" to cancel, the prohibition on charging me for the months I didn't use it would've made this a non-issue. Hell, I'd probably still be a customer today, now that I've long ago moved back to a city with Anytime Fitness locations.

> Even if I'd simply "forgotten" to cancel,

But you didn't. You clearly stated that the burden of cancelling was too high: " The gym staff admitted to remembering that I attempted to cancel because I was moving to a place with no Anytime Fitness locations; they refused to let me cancel my contract early without me showing them my new lease, which I didn't have yet"

This is the root of the problem. Not the "prohibition to charge for services you've subscribed to but don't use".

Re: Fair Pricing

#497

Post by sillyfluke »

lostlogin wrote: post #455
sillyfluke wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes I do think there is a important difference between google triangulating data, trading data with others and attaching a name to an ip adress by their own efforts without me voluntarily giving them that information for free. And you seem to forget that Google lost a class action suit about incognito mode. And I'd rather sue Google than Kagi. Plus, like 23andme, when times are tough I don't want to think about what…

> there is a important difference between google triangulating data, trading data with others and attaching a name to an ip adress by their own efforts without me voluntarily giving them that information for free. You’ve specified the difference. One company is actively trading your data as its core business, for profit. One isn’t. I find your position baffling.

> One isn't

No, one says it isn't at some specific point in time. Some people here seem to want to believe the last decade of bait amd switch VC backed startups never happened (often times through no fault of the founders).

>one is trading your data

As I mentiomed in my other comment, the user has tools at their disposal to prevent google figuring out its "your" data. No such tools exist when you're forced to sign into Kagi with your credit card.

Re: Fair Pricing

#498

Post by throwaway290 »

fooqux wrote: post #399
throwaway290 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I noticed if I need something hard to find I have to do a dozen+ different queries (and sometimes not find anything because it doesn't exist). Both with Kagi and Google the result is the same but with Kagi I also rack up a bunch per one attempt to find something. And if I need something easy to find but lazy both Google and Kagi reliably show the first correct result. So it's either unlimited or nothing. But since I…

> Plus, you're anonymous with Google but you're not anonymous with Kagi since you pay them. The idea that you're anonymous with Google is laughable. The amount of data they aggregate is well known. Their entire business model is to know who you are.

they can try a shadow profile but at least it's not tied to me;)

> Their entire business model is to know who you are.

this is literally the opposite of reality

Re: Fair Pricing

#499

Post by snowe2010 »

sillyfluke wrote: post #484
snowe2010 wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your position is baffling. You think that Google, who maintains every search you’ve ever made, including correlating them across every Gmail account you have, and who routinely provides this search data to authorities, as well as sells access to this data is somehow more safe to use than a company based in Europe, who are funded off of a subscription model, whom are not VC funded even though you claim that, and who’s…

Nothing in the comment you're responding to says anything about me using Google search or Gmail. In other comments I'm simple comparing the use case of using google search with an obfuscated connection and without ever signing into a google account with the use case of having to sign into Kagi. In that respect, I have no idea what you're talking about. If you're responding to another comment of mine please respond to…

Nothing in any of your comments indicates that you are using an obfuscated connection to search Google at all. In that case there is little difference to using Google signed in or not, you are still trackable across numerous devices and your searches are correlated. So being signed into kagi has little difference besides them now being less incentivized to sell your information or track you in any manner.

Re: Fair Pricing

#500

Post by ethbr1 »

bobdvb wrote: post #492
ethbr1 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting point, because it gets to when streaming services' content costs are paid. Are they upfront? Or do they pay per view royalties at the end of a streaming period? Or likely mix of both, varying by each piece of content terms? Hypothetically, if a streaming service structured most of their obligations in the form of post-view true-up's, they wouldn't have any problem doing this. And could make bank o…

For movies and series, there's a process called "Minimum Commit" where the media companies have to commit to spend $X for a bundle of content that includes both the content you want to sell and a random selection of crap to pad out the offering. Then it depends on the deal, but often the amount that each item is watched then contributes to the royalties cost. The relative exclusivity you might want will then dictate…

Fascinating! Thanks! I figured someone here would know modern practice.

I was flummoxed the other day when I talked with someone who was a content equity trader -- I didn't even realize that class of finance existed.

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