What do you think would happen if Google, Yahoo and MS started charging for search queries?  Let's say it's a fairly modest amount, say, $0.01 per search query (or equivalent in other currencies).

As these companies are providing a service to you, it does somewhat make sense for them to charge for it (whether or not they consider it beneficial is another matter), though having to pay for something you usually get for free isn't something people generally like.

Of course, there'll probably be some interwebs outcries at first, but if no reasonable alternative can pop out any time soon, it'll probably die down and people will accept it.
But what other impacts do you think it would have?  Search engines are pretty much an integral part of the internet nowadays, and having three primary companies in control over much of the western market raises some interesting potential issues...

And lastly, how would you change your internet behaviour if such a thing happened?

(This post was last modified: 05/10/2010 06:54 PM by ProperBritish.)

A lot of the times, what you search on Google can be accomplished equally well by searching at other more specific locations.  For example, instead of using Google to try to find torrents, you can search torrent indexing sites (eg. IsoHunt or Torrentz), or directly search the tracker websites (eg. TPB, and whatever private trackers you use).  Similarly, for general info, you can directly search something like Wikipedia, for anime info, you can search something like AniDB, and so on.  

And a lot of stuff simply do not need searching.  For example, if you wanted to find the latest version of Firefox, you can simply go to the Firefox website.

In that sense, you can pretty much bypass general search engines like Google for all but the most obscure and uncategorizable stuff, and specific questions.

(This post was last modified: 05/10/2010 07:59 PM by Assassinator.)

I don't think Google can be "bypassed" as easily as you say.  If all you ever look up is stuff you mentioned above, then yes, you could essentially bypass it.
But there are heaps of things you may search for which may not be so easy to do so.

For example:
- computer error messages
- ...or in fact, any issues you may have
- your favourite torrent sites go down
- general queries you may have

Localised searches will typically be better than Google if you can narrow yourself down to it, as you're guaranteed results within a certain context.

(05/10/2010 07:59 PM)ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:  I don't think Google can be "bypassed" as easily as you say.  If all you ever look up is stuff you mentioned above, then yes, you could essentially bypass it.
But there are heaps of things you may search for which may not be so easy to do so.

For example:
- computer error messages
- ...or in fact, any issues you may have
- your favourite torrent sites go down
- general queries you may have

I'm not saying everything can be bypassed, I'm just saying a lot (the majority) of stuff can, thus you're not like 100% reliant on Google.

And if you do bypass a lot of that stuff, then even if Google costs money, it wouldn't be nearly as big a hit on your budget as it otherwise would.  Because you're no going to have 100 different error messages or random issues or favourite torrent sites going down every day.

There would also be ways of increasing your search efficiency, for example, by using more keywords and making your searches more specific, and so on.

For me, I can see schools either paying a shared account for schools (If such a deal would exist if this thing were to exist) or go back to library books.
I wouldn't change that much as I memorized/bookmarked most of my common websites if it were to be implemented right now. If it was implemented years ago then that would be different

Well i'd think it wouldn't work simply because someone else would offer it for free, and these companies would lose market share , and plus it would lock out new users cause u would need to give them bank or other payment details, there maybe a niche market for an exclusive premium paid search engine though, but if it has to stay mass market i don't think pay per query is the way to go, also the big internet companies are already making reasonable profits, they wouldn't need to do something like this,