You might be able to charge for search in a specialized sub-domain of search, particularly if you can find a niche where the quality of search results could make/cost the user money.
For generalized search though, I think it's gonna be hard to find many users who will pay. Looking at Google Zeitgeist as an indicator of what most people search for, it look to me like most searches are for fairly trivial information. Most searches don't require the best results, just a number of good results. Google and Bing both do a good job providing good results.. so what's your selling point going to be?
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You might be able to charge for search in a specialized sub-domain of search, particularly if you can find a niche where the quality of search results could make/cost the user money.
For generalized search though, I think it's gonna be hard to find many users who will pay. Looking at Google Zeitgeist as an indicator of what most people search for, it look to me like most searches are for fairly trivial information. Most searches don't require the best results, just a number of good results. Google and Bing both do a good job providing good results.. so what's your selling point going to be?