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.
For search engine: I’m self hosting SearXNG so I’m already indirectly paying via domain registry/VPS? So yes. Technically this can be done for free though (local docker, random RasPi laying around, …)
For email: paid (mailbox.org), worth it. Selfhosting email was too much of a headache at least for me
I paid for an email service to step back from google and the services were so disappointing after a couple years and never improved that i couldn’t justify the admittedly low cost and went back to freemails.
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.
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.
If I had the money, then sure. I am currently barely keeping my apartment and pantry stocked tho, so I would not take this option unless it was dirt cheap
Kagi and Tuta. OP is drunk.
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, $10 (plus tax) per month for unlimited search is a ridiculous price.
Email yes but only with my own domain so I can change providers if the price changes.
I wouldn’t pay for anything I’d prefer to keep anonymous and that includes search.
How is your email not flagged as spam? Last time I ran my own email/domain, I could hardly deliver anything. Been 10-years though and I’ve learned more about best practices. Can it be done now?
Running your own SMTP is still going to be tough. But you can use a mail provider that lets you use your own domain, then you can use their SMTP which should not get flagged as easily.
Yes. I pay for Proton for mail and Kagi for search.
As long as it’s fairly priced with proper privacy, definitely.
kagi.com is a paid search engine like you describe.
I use kagi. Better search results than Google. No bullshit. Love it.
I pay for Kagi Search, it’s awesome. It’s got a ton of useful features you’d never see in advertising-based search engines, like the ability to up and down rank sites.
Free proton for email, paid Kagi for search.
I use Purelymail for Email, just because it was the cheapest and easiest solution to use my own domain without having to host anything myself. I don’t think any other Email service will beat their 10$ per year price.
For search engine, I have tried Kagi but just didn’t see the point. My DDG searches are perfectly fine and I still find everything I need with relative ease. Although I’ve been actually needing the search engine much less recently as I’ve embraced just reading the official documentation for things I program with haha
No I wouldn’t.
E-Mail is an essential tool and so is using a search engine. When ProtonMail was offering a subscription just so I can have multiple folders, that turned me off.
I hate that what is deemed essential, is turned into a monetizing scheme. God forbid those of us lived in a time where search engines were useful and e-mail was perfected. Now we’re in the era of monetizing everything so those two features have been enshittified.
a time where search engines were useful and e-mail was perfected
And YouTube was friendlier! Google was losing money on all that in order to corner the market. Now they want paid back. Kinda like reddit losing money every quarter for 19-years. They just turned a profit for the first time.
We got a lot of free shit, got used it, and are now bitching about paying, or watching ads. Ultimately, enshittification was always in the cards. Not sure how we get around that without paying for microservices, kinda like OP is asking about.
If it’s free, you are the product. How do you expect someone to offer you services for free?
Linux is free, for a trivial counter example.
Linux isn’t a service though. And it’s getting funding.
You’re telling this to someone who has been on 30 years online, that little regurgitated and redundant statement of yours, was only relevant for the past 15 of those years. Services that were offered for free made it by just fine, the problem is greed, in that which you don’t care to see.
Let me spin that little statement of yours around since you want to try and sound smart, you go to buildings of grocery stores, banks .etc for free. Guess what? YOU’RE ALWAYS THE PRODUCT! So don’t just think it’s an internet-only thing. Now go touch some grass.
Let me spin that little statement of yours around since you want to try and sound smart, you go to buildings of grocery stores, banks .etc for free.
There are few things funnier than watching someone being condescending while making the dumbest argument imagineable.
30 years and you haven’t figured out that hosting anything online costs money?
That cost is getting recovered, one way or another. I’d prefer to just pay for it, personally, rather than have my entire identity be commoditized.
Let me spin that little statement of yours around
you spun it around until you got nauseous and puked that argument all over your keyboard, huh?
But you pay at grocery stores LOL. That sentiment is valid. You don’t have to be the product.
The fuck do you get for paid email? It’s literally just SMTP/POP — where’s the “value add”? I use my own email client so the bullshit ads from Google aren’t an issue, but am I missing out on some email 2.0 magic??
It’s literally just SMTP/POP — where’s the “value add”?
I’d say to the majority of people, that first part reads like nonsense.
The value add is thus “you don’t have to learn computer stuff.”
The person you’re responding to has clearly never been in charge of hosting a mail server. That shit is absolutely not worth it.
Free email sounds good until you realize you’re paying for it by letting them peruse your mail to scrape out ad data and feed their LLMs.
I’m pretty happy to pay a small fee to avoid both of the above.
