Ask HN: Will there be a better Google? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Will there be a better Google?

#31

Post by marmot777 » Tue, Sep 06, 2016, 11:04 AM UTC

kyloren wrote: post #4

fairpx wrote: post #3

The answer, I think, is in the book you're reading. Search was stuck long before Google came. Then came Google and they made search better. Right now, search again is stuck. Until someone comes up with a way that everybody else is missing, to take search to a new level.

I am yet to come to that point of the book. Where is the search stuck at the moment? I can't seem to understand that.

It's not. Search works great. I think that's the wrong way to frame it as being "stuck." Better to say where's the opening? The main one that I see any action around is privacy. There must be other opportunities that nobody's seen and acted on yet but will. It'll be interesting.

Re: Ask HN: Will there be a better Google?

#32

Post by marmot777 » Tue, Sep 06, 2016, 11:06 AM UTC

Pamar wrote: post #7

kyloren wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am yet to come to that point of the book. Where is the search stuck at the moment? I can't seem to understand that.

I suppose you are too young to have used Altavista? Or Yahoo "curated" link lists?

Oh god, I remember how exciting it was when Google rolled out. Goodby Altavista and all the rest. Though I do have a place in my heart and gratitude for Altavista. That search engine found me whatever I wanted to find. It worked well. Google just came in and was better.

Re: Ask HN: Will there be a better Google?

#33

Post by marmot777 » Tue, Sep 06, 2016, 11:08 AM UTC

mongodude wrote: post #6

I don't think there will be a search engine better than Google in the near future (may not forever). Best search engines today will have to throw results based on user preferences to stay relevant and compete with Google's results. Cracking the perfect semantic search (chat bots) may change this but Google may have advantage here just because of the amount of data it has. Any great algorithm, unfortunately will be li…

I don't think search needs to be made better. There are more important problems. That doesn't mean there aren't innovations to be had in search engines but it does not have to be better search algos.

Re: Ask HN: Will there be a better Google?

#34

Post by firebones » Wed, Sep 07, 2016, 2:57 AM UTC

marmot777 wrote: post #32

Pamar wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose you are too young to have used Altavista? Or Yahoo "curated" link lists?

Oh god, I remember how exciting it was when Google rolled out. Goodby Altavista and all the rest. Though I do have a place in my heart and gratitude for Altavista. That search engine found me whatever I wanted to find. It worked well. Google just came in and was better.

My memory of Altavista was that it was great for discovery of obscure but interesting sites. Sure, you might have to go through 10 pages of results to find one, but the experience was one of serendipitous discovery. It's lack of precision (in favor of recall, making it seem less winner-take-all, SEO-optimized) seemed to correlate strongly with the notion of "surfing" the web. (And the use of the phrase "web surfing" likely declined as Google, and later, the app economy, rose.)

Re: Ask HN: Will there be a better Google?

#35

Post by simbalion » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 3:22 AM UTC

FT_intern wrote: post #22

simbalion wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with what you've said but I wanted to add that there is room for improvement on Google's model. For example, selling page 1 results is unfair, but that is something google does. I think DuckDuckGo is an example of how Google's methodology can be refined and improved upon, specifically by not spying on users. It's a subtle improvement, but I find the results I receive are actually superior and more relevant th…

I don't think it's sustainable to not spy on users or to not serve ads. Keeping user data adds to relevancy and if there is no revenue, there are no relevancy engineers.

That might be true, but web-search is an absolutely vital service for cultural health in the information age, like the telephone system used to be.

Every search engine does sell ads, which seems to be working for them all so far. If that ever stops working, we might see web-search become a public utility funded by tax dollars.