The other day I asked my partner if he had googled something we had talked about earlier, and he said “No, I did not want to waste a Google.”  That got me thinking.  What if….Google had a fee attached to every search?

How much would it be worth to you?  What would Google charge? Surely a dollar would be too high for a pizza restaurant search, but is it too high for searching for a mutual fund?

Would businesses pay more than individuals?  Would searching for porn cost more than searching for online classes?  How would Google structure its algorithms to mirror its manifesto – “Don’t be evil?”

How many googles do you do a day? 10? 50? 200?  What would you pay if Google put up a pay wall?  One cent per google? 15 cents per google?  A buck a day?  Would you would invest $120 monthly for unlimited googles?  What’s it worth to you?  Could you live without it?  Would you finally resort to Bing? Notice how bing is not a verb yet?  It’s a noun, not a verb.

So, that must be Larry and Sergey’s exit plan.  They’ve got to make this thing pay off somehow.