Thank you for your detailed response. It's illuminating. That being said, isn't this mostly speculative? Time after time, we have seen majority of people choose ads over subscription. The only successful digital subscription models have been for streaming (netflix etc), ecommerce (amazon etc); basically things that have never been ads-supported.

I have never seen a service/industry move from ads to subscription. People will watch as many ads as you throw at them to avoid paying.

For example, even though youtube keeps increasing ads to an annoying level, vast majority of public is willing to grovel through that rather than pay for it. What evidence do you have that makes you think that that will change?

Please don't get me wrong. I admire someone creating a new and different search engine but if you keep growing in size, I believe you will face the same pressures that google/bing/etc faced and go the same route they did. "The king is dead, long live the king" scenario.

PS : remember larry and sergey warned about advertising incentives in their research paper as well but once you see the 9-10-11-12 digit figures on a piece of paper, idealistic morality usually goes out the window.

Ofc this is just my "educated guess at best, speculation at worst". I have a lot less information than you in this field.