Not sure there's a reasonable way of measuring my "search engine time" (time actually viewing results? time reading the sites found?) but the vast majority of the time I do spend using them is work time, and the quality of results affects my ability to do my job. It's nigh on impossible to measure, of course, but I suspect even a modest improvement would easily pay for itself at that price point, in my case.
That's a good point: should we include the amount of time viewing the content found by the search engine? I'm not sure but this would certainly bump the time estimate up. It's even more complex, because if I find the right information fast, I spend less time viewing the results, but I actually have a better experience, meaning that there is an argument for an inverse relationship with the time spent on a search engine and the value derived.
