We will be at the end of the AI hype cycle we are currently in. Majority of AI/search startups that exist today will no longer be around, failing to find a viable business model that has a hope of profitability, as stuffing ads inside will put them in direct trajectory of Google/Microsoft's insane resources.
Google and Microsoft situation will be much better defined. One of these companies will discover that being a platform open to developers is a strategic advantage. Ad-supported search as a model will fail to find ground in AI answers. Both companies will inject so many ads in AI chat answers to pay for the bills, that AI answers will become so intelligence insulting that even users who previously didn't mind ads (or had ways to block them) will finally start looking for ad-free search alternatives. Some ad-supported results will start having 'for entertainment purposes only' label as they will start to carry unwanted liability otherwise.
This will finally allow large scale prolifiration of a new breed of search products offering search experiences made for users instead of advertisers. Paying for search will become much more common and we will be slowly exiting the 25 years Matrix-like coma situation we are currently held in, where the expectation for the most valuable and intimate thing we do online (search and browsing) is to be free, while we accept to surrender our private information, time and attention in return.
The alignment of incentives in combination with enough resources and the newest techonlgoies will finally allow for truly amazing innovation in search, changing the way we consume information forever.
At the same time, we will start to see signs of the first public search engines (goverment subsidized), inheriting the role that public libraries had for centuries, as access to information will be deemed as a fundamental human right.
So when I think about Kagi's trajectory, it is surviving the next two years and keeping on innovating that matters. The business model is already sound and future-proof (the price will come down too).
Thank you for your detailed response. It's illuminating. That being said, isn't this mostly speculative? Time after time, we have seen majority of people choose ads over subscription. The only successful digital subscription models have been for streaming (netflix etc), ecommerce (amazon etc); basically things that have never been ads-supported.
I have never seen a service/industry move from ads to subscription. People will watch as many ads as you throw at them to avoid paying.
For example, even though youtube keeps increasing ads to an annoying level, vast majority of public is willing to grovel through that rather than pay for it. What evidence do you have that makes you think that that will change?
Please don't get me wrong. I admire someone creating a new and different search engine but if you keep growing in size, I believe you will face the same pressures that google/bing/etc faced and go the same route they did. "The king is dead, long live the king" scenario.
PS : remember larry and sergey warned about advertising incentives in their research paper as well but once you see the 9-10-11-12 digit figures on a piece of paper, idealistic morality usually goes out the window.
Ofc this is just my "educated guess at best, speculation at worst". I have a lot less information than you in this field.
The example you gave is actually quite telling actually. There are already 25 million people who pay for Youtube Premium today. By any account that is a tremendously large number for a product that really does not offer any innovation or advantage over the ad-supported version. So people are ready.
And ad-free search products like the one Kagi is building are able to offer much more value and features than their ad-supported counterparts (which are inherinetly restricted by the nature of the business model and their customer being different than their user).
To be clear, I do not think that in two or even five years paid search will rule the world in a way that ad-supported search does now, but I think that enough people will realize that access to information that has only their best interest in mind will make them more productive and competitive in the future world, and make paying for search a much more viable option than today.
Have more thoughts about this in "The age of pagerank is over" blog post if you want to spare a moment. [1]
Never have I seen someone so succinctly articulate what the fuck went wrong with the Web.
Seeing social media, for example, go from "fun way to catch up with friends and family" to "pump ads, FUD and FOMO to our users as efficiently and accurately as possible, 24x7x365" has been an incredibly sad experience.
Seeing Google go from "I can type a question and find what I'm looking for" to "I have to append site:reddit.com to every query to avoid SEO-optimized puff pieces because Google can't be trusted" is disheartening.
I really hate having to be so overly aggressive in blocking ads and trackers on my devices because collecting this telemetry is the only way for many Internet companies to survive these days.
It doesn't help that talking about this with non-Internet-savvy people who were hoodwinked into the status quo makes me sound like a stereotypical doomsday cult subscriber.
I really hope the rest of the world agrees with the future you're describing here, Vlad.
Thank you so much for writing this. I'm proud to help support your mission in fixing the Internet.
>> The only successful digital subscription models have been for streaming (netflix etc), ecommerce (amazon etc); basically things that have never been ads-supported.
The exact same, maybe using AI on the backend to improve results, maybe for language translation. But AI is useless in search for the most part. People are looking for a specific thing quickly with the least typing. People don’t want to have a conversation with a chat bot to personalize their results.
I think AI is overhyped right now. Very few real businesses being built on GPT outside of copywriting and blog spam, and consumer toys (avatars, art, funny filters).
I also think Google knows it’s not as disruptive as people think it is.
Different use cases. For writing code or poetry, being able to follow up is wonderful. Or for exploring a topic you're curious about. Or for summarizing.
For other things, maybe less useful. But I think you're underestimating. People Google for Google or type domains into search and click the first link regardless of what it says. If chat gives people what they want with vague queries, they'll use it.
Google but allowing incremental queries. Incremental!= conversational a la ChatGPT. So I can tell Google to ignore an interpretation of my query so I can drill down to the exact thing. I don’t like writing full sentences or questions to ChatGPT especially when it doesn’t have auto complete.
Generative content sprinkled here and there but majority of results still being genuine human created content.
I don’t see MSFT being a player here. Their ML talent is shallow, their search team is tiny compared to Google and a partnership with a startup won’t change that
