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Ask HN: Can we create a new internet where search engines are irrelevant?

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Re: Ask HN: Can we create a new internet where search engines are irrelevant?

#51

Post by olegious »

_nalply wrote: post #14

The deeper problem is advertising. It is sort of a prisoner's dilemma: all commercial entities have a shouting contest to attract customer attention. It's expensive for everybody. If we could kill advertisement permanently, we can have an internet as described in the question. This will almost be like an emergent feature of the internet.

If we kill advertisement, you can say goodbye to the vast majority of content on the internet. The better approach is to make advertising a better experience and to create incentives for advertisers to spend ad dollars on quality content.

Re: Ask HN: Can we create a new internet where search engines are irrelevant?

#52

Post by Kaiyou »

anc84 wrote: post #28
Kaiyou wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You ask a question (possibly on Stack-Something) and don't get ridiculed for not using Google, since you live in a world where search engines don't exist.

And how would you find out if that question has been answered before? That would only work if there was single unified centralised question site. And then we are pretty much back at Google's single search field.

You don't need to. It's not a problem to ask and answer the same question repeatedly. School never had a problem with that.

Re: Ask HN: Can we create a new internet where search engines are irrelevant?

#53

Post by [deleted] »

endymi0n wrote: post #45
worldsayshi wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could supercharge word of mouth. I've been thinking about an alternative upvote model where content is ranked not primarily based on aggregate voting but by: - ranking content that users you have upvoted higher - ranking content that users with similar upvote behaviour higher While there is a risk of upvote bubbles, it should potentially make it easier for niche content to spread to interested people and make it p…

As long as there are big companies making money off their products, you can be sure they'll find a way to advertise them to you.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Can we create a new internet where search engines are irrelevant?

#54

Post by rglullis »

olegious wrote: post #51
_nalply wrote: post #14

The deeper problem is advertising. It is sort of a prisoner's dilemma: all commercial entities have a shouting contest to attract customer attention. It's expensive for everybody. If we could kill advertisement permanently, we can have an internet as described in the question. This will almost be like an emergent feature of the internet.

If we kill advertisement, you can say goodbye to the vast majority of content on the internet. The better approach is to make advertising a better experience and to create incentives for advertisers to spend ad dollars on quality content.

There will always be bottom-feeders as long as there is a market where people are not forced to choose with their wallets. Killing the "vast majority of content on the internet" seems like a good thing to me, honestly.

Re: Ask HN: Can we create a new internet where search engines are irrelevant?

#56

Post by Kaiyou »

bpye wrote: post #29
Kaiyou wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You ask a question (possibly on Stack-Something) and don't get ridiculed for not using Google, since you live in a world where search engines don't exist.

And then 5 other users ask the same question because they have no search engine. I think this gets boring quick...

Teachers teaching the same class every year can't use this as an excuse either.

Re: Ask HN: Can we create a new internet where search engines are irrelevant?

#57

Post by mhandley »

We could always ask a different question: what would it take for everyone to have a copy of the index? Humans can only produce new text-based content at a linear rate. If storage continues to grow at an exponential rate, eventually it becomes relatively cheap to hold a copy of the index.

Of course those assumptions may not be valid. Content may grow faster than linear. Content may not all be produced by humans. Storage won't grow exponentially forever. But good content probably grows linearly at most, and maybe even slower if old good content is more accessible. Already it's feasible to hold all of the English wikipedia on a phone. Doing the same for Internet content is certainly going to remain non-trivial for a while yet. But sometimes you have to ask the dumb questions...

Re: Ask HN: Can we create a new internet where search engines are irrelevant?

#58

Post by BerislavLopac »

We already have it, and it's called BitTorrent. DNS as well.

What you call Internet is actually World Wide Web, just another protocol (HTTP) on top of Internet (TCP/IP), which was designed to be decentralised but lacked any worthwhile discovery mechanism before two students designed the BackRub protocol.

Re: Ask HN: Can we create a new internet where search engines are irrelevant?

#59

Post by BerislavLopac »

mhandley wrote: post #57

We could always ask a different question: what would it take for everyone to have a copy of the index? Humans can only produce new text-based content at a linear rate. If storage continues to grow at an exponential rate, eventually it becomes relatively cheap to hold a copy of the index. Of course those assumptions may not be valid. Content may grow faster than linear. Content may not all be produced by humans. Stora…

More and more content is decidedly not created by humans.

Re: Ask HN: Can we create a new internet where search engines are irrelevant?

#60

Post by cf141q5325 »

drenvuk wrote: post #12

Finding information has never been trivial and until you can read people's minds to see what they really mean when they search for 'cookies' when they really mean "how to clear my internet browsing history for the past hour" it will continue to be non-trivial. The work Google has done in the search space is damn near magical. Your question belittles the literal billions of dollars and millions of man hours that have…

Tbh I have the feeling search results get a lot worse as a result of google trying to guess what I am looking for. The occurrences of me not finding stuff where I know I used the right search terms increased a lot recently. If I search for cookies I want the results for cookies and nothing else. If the first few results ignore part of my search query something is seriously wrong.
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