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

news.ycombinator.com

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

#81

Post by gshdg »

rmsaksida wrote: post #33
azangru wrote: post #11

I can't imagine how this is possible. Imagine I have a string of words (a quote from a book or an article, a fragment of an error message, etc), and I want to find the full text where it appears (or pages discussing it). How would you do that without a search engine?

I think OP's idea is that search services would be built into the Internet, and not provided by a third party. That is, when a website is published or updated, it is somehow instantly indexed and made available for search as a feature of the platform on which it was published.

Indexed where?

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

#82

Post by dorusr »

pavas wrote: post #26
lxn wrote: post #18

Most of the search engines now days have the advantage of being closed source (you don't know how their algorithm actually work). This makes the fight against unethical SEO practices easier. With a distributed open search alternative the algorithm is more susceptible to exploits by malicious actors. Having it manually curated is too much of a task for any organization. If you let user vote on the results... well, tha…

I've been thinking that the only way to get around the bad-actor (or paid agent) problem when dealing with online networks is to have some sort of distributed trust mechanism. I feel like manually curated information is the way to go, you just have to find some way to filter out all the useless info and marketing/propaganda. You can't crowd source it because it opens up avenues for gaming the system. The only solutio…

That's very workable.Any agent should have a private key with which it signs it's pushes. Age of an agent and score of feedback for that agent determine its ranking.Though that still leaves gaming possible with the feedback. But heavy feeback like "this is malicious content" could be moderated. (So that people cant just report stuff they don't like).

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

#83

Post by tjansen »

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…

You may have the storage to store it, but do you have the bandwidth to receive everything that's being produced?

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

#84

Post by pif »

_nalply wrote: post #61
olegious wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Advertisement just should not be the central means of income of content producers. I really hope this point of view gets killed together with advertisement.

> Advertisement just should not be the central means of income of content producers.

Can you propose any viable alternative?

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

#85

Post by zdxt »

jedberg wrote: post #39
rmsaksida wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think OP's idea is that search services would be built into the Internet, and not provided by a third party. That is, when a website is published or updated, it is somehow instantly indexed and made available for search as a feature of the platform on which it was published.

But you still need a third party to rank the results. I don't just want any page about my error message, I want the best page.

The platform could provide useful metadata, leaving the ranking up to the client..

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

#86

Post by BjoernKW »

_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.

Other than a completely new approach for producing value such as the 'Freeism' one described in the article suggested in this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20282851 (which I hadn't time to read yet and hence I'm neither in favour of or against) this simply boils down to the questions of who will pay for relevant content and what the business model will be.

By and large, people don't seem to be willing to pay for content on the web. Hence, advertising became the dominant business model for content on the web.

Find another way for someone to pay for relevant content and you can do away with advertising. It's as simple as that.

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

#87

Post by mhandley »

tjansen wrote: post #83
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…

You may have the storage to store it, but do you have the bandwidth to receive everything that's being produced?

There are 8 billion people. If half of them were awake, and 10 percent of that half are actually typing at 40 words/minute, that would be about 13Gbit/s. I couldn't receive that feed today at home, but my work could. A satellite feed could work today too. And I wasn't really talking about today, but 10-20 years from now. Storage will be a problem for a lot longer than network capacity.

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

#88

Post by amelius »

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.

The question was about search engines, not about content.

But I think the combination of advertising+search engines is particularly bad, so paying for search would be a great first step.

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

#89

Post by Fjolsvith »

BjoernKW wrote: post #86
_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.

Other than a completely new approach for producing value such as the 'Freeism' one described in the article suggested in this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20282851 (which I hadn't time to read yet and hence I'm neither in favour of or against) this simply boils down to the questions of who will pay for relevant content and what the business model will be. By and large, people don't seem to be willing…

> Find another way for someone to pay for relevant content and you can do away with advertising. It's as simple as that.

Not so simple. What is relevant for me may be irrelevant for you.

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

#90

Post by [deleted] »

_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.

[deleted]
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