Basically because the product they’re selling isn’t “You get to do a search whenever” but “You get to do a search this month”.
The reason for that, based on my experience with various web startups, is they want to maximize the predictability of their resource usage in terms of staff and servers.
If millions of people pay their $5 and then don’t use their searches, then in the extreme case Kagi could be maintaining servers twenty years later in anticipation that their customers might use those searches.
It’s an edge case, but it illustrates the point.
Also, on the customer side, there’s a psychological benefit to free things. Free as in “already paid for; no cost to using it”.
If you have something that can be used this month but not any other month, then using it is free. If using it now means you can’t use it next year, then there’s still a cost to it despite it already being paid for.
Basically because the product they’re selling isn’t “You get to do a search whenever” but “You get to do a search this month”.
The reason for that, based on my experience with various web startups, is they want to maximize the predictability of their resource usage in terms of staff and servers.
If millions of people pay their $5 and then don’t use their searches, then in the extreme case Kagi could be maintaining servers twenty years later in anticipation that their customers might use those searches.
It’s an edge case, but it illustrates the point.
Also, on the customer side, there’s a psychological benefit to free things. Free as in “already paid for; no cost to using it”.
If you have something that can be used this month but not any other month, then using it is free. If using it now means you can’t use it next year, then there’s still a cost to it despite it already being paid for.
I think you are definitely correct here. However, you are overlooking the actual main goal of every business - making as much money as possible.