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.
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.
Yes. I pay for Proton for mail and Kagi for search.
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.
I haven’t done it myself but know people who do. If you use a known provider and only the domain is yours I wouldn’t expect it to be blocked as companies also use their own domain for their email.
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, $10 (plus tax) per month for unlimited search is a ridiculous price.
Kagi and Tuta. OP is drunk.
Free proton for email, paid Kagi for search.
Yep. I switched to Kagi a bit over a year ago, which is paid search. And I pay for my email through Migadu; I thought about hosting it myself but honestly it seemed like more potential hassle than I wanted to deal with.
Fastmail is so insanely good it’s crazy how bad Gmail got
Not doing it for search engines currently, but I am absolutely doing it for a VPN ( Proton ) for the bonus of having better drive and email attached.
I will agree with you on trusting Proton more than google and how suspicious Proton can seem.
No. There’s no guarantee they won’t get greedy and start selling my data anyway. They’d have to have a really good pitch and some way to back it up that would get me to pay. I yet know what it is, but I haven’t seen it yet.
I use Purelymail for Email, just because it was the cheapest and easiest solution to use my own domain without having to host anything myself. I don’t think any other Email service will beat their 10$ 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
I pay for proton mail, but selfhost my own meta-search engine. Its not as pure as as one that crawls the web on its own, but the ones that do aren’t developed enough for everyday use in my opinion.
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
