Will search engine users ever pay a user fee to use a search engine?

Let's assume there was no Google, no Bing, no search engines period. And let's assume that your contacts proposed search algorithm was just as good as all of those systems and no one ever tried to scam it (and while we're at it, something likely, like we all get a magic talking unicorns!) How often have you looked for specific information and come up with not what you wanted again and again and again. How would you feel if you were paying for each of those for-crap results? How long before somebody's magic talking unicorn came up with a search engine that did make people feel like they were being screwed by charging for all these false hits, and instead chose to make their money off of advertisement or something?

There are paid/subscription databases that the user pays for because the information can only be found in that database (like LExisNexis or academic/journal articles). Generally though, even searching those databases is free; the results are behind a paywall with just enough info to sound interesting - that is the enticement. As well, usually it is information businesses or institutions would be willing to write off as a business expense. The only incentive I can think of for someone to pay for search results of a general web search is to prevent the data mining of their information search patterns. But generally someone THAT concerned about their digital trail is well-versed in proxies and free services. Once people are used to a free service they have a hard time paying for it again unless the free service has ended or there is value added in some way (like efficiently or accuracy). I am thinking of things like limewire and napster that were great until fake songs started appearing; now I often pay for my music via itunes because I can't be bothered to search and listen to tonnes of files for the sake of saving a dollar when it is just one search and click away from downloading. What value-added service would a paid search offer?

There are professionals that do offer web searching as a job (either paid as freelancers or gov't employees at a library) but their value added service is accuracy. They use a reference interview to drill down what the client/member needs before they even input anything into the search engine. An automated reference interview cannot be as accurate because there is so much going on in proper reference interview - beyond looking for synonyms for what the client is looking for there is creating an atmosphere of trust and confidence, looking for non-verbalised clues, a willingness to keep asking "is this what you want or is there still a perfect answer out there we can search for?", being aware of the zeitgeist, awareness of current topics as well as historically popular topics of questions. Very few people are able to start their web search with what they really need - instead they tend to look for what information they "know" is out there using the terms they are familiar with that is close to what they think they want.

"Intuitively," people won't pay for a service if they can effortlessly get a variety of equivalent services that are free. Basically the whole "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" burden is on Ideas Guy. If this search engine is for information that isn't publicly searchable, that would justify a usage fee. If the search engine is in some way dramatically better than existing free search engines, that also might justify a usage fee although it's a lot harder to make that case, since there are (for example) search engines that dramatically improve precision and recall and are domain-specific, and they are free to search. Now, maybe this search engine is worth paying for regardless of what else is out there for free. I paid my $5 to join MeFi, we're told that the $5 fee keeps out the unwashed masses and on current evidence that claim is justified. I lurked for a while before joining, so I'd already had plenty of opportunity to be convinced. So if someone else wanted to start an online community and charge $5 to join, they could cite MetaFilter as an example of a successful community that charges a fee. If Ideas Guy can cite examples of successful search engines that charge a fee to search, then maybe he's got a point. If there are no equivalent search engines out there that charge a fee to search, it's up to Ideas Guy to demonstrate why he's got a leg to stand on.

People charge money for otherwise free software that's been reskinned or something. It's not necessarily illegal but it relies on the ignorance of users. It's kind of a self-limiting exercise since if you're not adding any value once your "product" attains any level of popularity the fact that it's a just a ripoff of something free will become more widely known and people will just use the original instead.

Is the search engine pointing to some sort of specialized information, like academic articles, that Google would not be able to find?

There's no reason this can't work; there are many reasons it probably won't. Businesses that take on giant projects without any kind of evidence for something being a good decision, rather than insisting that someone else has to prove it's bad, go bankrupt very quickly. If it's just in an exploratory stage, I wouldn't worry about Proving Them Wrong Immediately; the idea will prove itself or not once subject to a bit of scrutiny. There's like a 99.9% chance that it's a totally dumb plan, but I personally recall insisting that there was no way Google was going to get anywhere because it was so patently obvious that Yahoo was better. Excite originally refused to buy them for a song. So. If this is something your company is already planning to invest serious money in, on nothing more than "nobody conclusively proved that it was impossible before we started", that's so much bigger a problem than trying to compete with Google, in practical terms, that I'd be looking for a new job, because you inadvertently ended up working in a Dilbert cartoon. But hopefully that's not it!

That's like saying, "Can someone give me a business model of why paid libraries wouldn't work?" There are free public libraries everywhere. To sell a product, you need a unique selling proposition. All you have described is a search engine that is no different from Google. If you aren't giving people something they can't already get for free, what is their incentive to pay?

Why is this particular service worth $X to its users? Is it saving time versus the market leader? Is it helping people to make more money at their chosen professions? How much? It needs to be quantifiable. People don't pay for services "just because". You have to be able to make a business case for why your target market will pay the price you're asking for the service you're providing. Not just "why wouldn't they". Even the classical examples of this, like Westlaw and Lexis, are currently facing severe downward price pressures as their corpus has become increasingly available on the open internet. But there are whole companies that exist just to do market research on whether people would pay $4 for a particular brand of drugstore face cream and whatever, this is not something you just have to guess at. Or them, if someone is proposing this to you as an investor or whatever. The fact that people don't pay for ordinary search engines now does not mean they never would--it all depends on the actual product. Like everything in the economy, the price of the competition will have an impact, but it's not the only determining factor. That said, if somebody wanted to start up a new store that was just like Walmart only cost massively more than going to Walmart, well, you'd laugh at them. If they didn't preface this with how this idea blows the existing options out of the water, this isn't a proposal to be taken seriously.