so there’s this smarmy lab assistant who’s running around bugging everyone who’s trying to work about IF GOOGLE CHARGED TEN DOLLARS A YEAR WOULD YOU PAY IT and when they say no are you crazy he starts laughing. i mean, i’m assuming it’s laughing. i’ve never heard sounds like this come out of a human before but there’s a touch of desperate hilarity behind the indescribable horror so i’m making an approximation. THIS IS WHAT IS WRONG WITH AMERICANS!!! NOT EVEN FIVE DOLLARS?!? no, you nutbag. if google charged a subscription fee, i’d start using teoma. i mean, more than i do already. can you imagine logging in every time you want to google for something? or not being able to send someone a list of google results because OH SHIT I DIDN’T RENEW MY GOOGLE SUBSCRIPTION!!! also, this kind of thing only works for something with an existing reputation. you’re not going to pay a fucking subscription fee for a search engine you’ve never used before, so they wouldn’t get any new users. voluntary donations? sure, look at pa. an entire year on reader donations; the shift back to advertising has been a relatively recent one. and speaking of advertising, google has already figured out the best way to capitalize on its popularity - text ads.