I feel like google enshittified itself with SEO and bloat. Maybe if we just re-made the original and changed the business model it would be good again.
Ask HN: Could we just re-invent original Google?
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Re: Ask HN: Could we just re-invent original Google?
#2DuckDuckGo?
Re: Ask HN: Could we just re-invent original Google?
#3Google loves to put its thumb on the scale and also shape results to what its handlers feels is acceptable. Another search engine could do away with both of those. SEO however will exist regardless of it the search engine favors particular content formats or not.
Re: Ask HN: Could we just re-invent original Google?
#4SEO is something that happened to Google, any search engine will have to deal with it.
What changes to the business model are you envisaging?
Re: Ask HN: Could we just re-invent original Google?
#5Here you go: distributed, peer-to-peer, FLOSS search engine: https://yacy.net
Re: Ask HN: Could we just re-invent original Google?
#6The real prize is to deshittify the content on the web. Ignoring copyrights for a moment, it should be possible to rewrite pages in 1000s of sites down to just the information. StackOverflow could just have the Q&As, news sites could just have the news, Pinterest would just have the pictures. Remove all the signup nags and popups.
With good tools, one person could probably maintain the deshittifier for a few sites, at least until the sites started getting adversarial about it.
Re: Ask HN: Could we just re-invent original Google?
#7The real prize is to deshittify the content on the web. Ignoring copyrights for a moment, it should be possible to rewrite pages in 1000s of sites down to just the information. StackOverflow could just have the Q&As, news sites could just have the news, Pinterest would just have the pictures. Remove all the signup nags and popups. With good tools, one person could probably maintain the deshittifier for a few sites, a…
SO is one of the examples where there isn't that much bloat, usually the longest answers are more detailed and let you learn, instead of just copy pasting (potentially) working code.
In the web Google is in part responsible for adding more content, they always suggested longer articles because it helped the algo get a better context. But for us humans it mostly doesn't make sense.
The same happens with books but I think we are at fault too, I would think twice about a book that is 80 pages, but the truth is that 80 pages could be a lot for most topics. I believe that the summarization capabilities of LLMs are gonna make a generation feel different about short content.
Re: Ask HN: Could we just re-invent original Google?
#8The real prize is to deshittify the content on the web. Ignoring copyrights for a moment, it should be possible to rewrite pages in 1000s of sites down to just the information. StackOverflow could just have the Q&As, news sites could just have the news, Pinterest would just have the pictures. Remove all the signup nags and popups. With good tools, one person could probably maintain the deshittifier for a few sites, a…
ChatGPT is basically the deshittifier that rewrites thousands of sites to just the information…?
And it has a much better interface than original Google. Every query starts with the equivalent of “I’m feeling lucky”, but then you can ask further questions.
Re: Ask HN: Could we just re-invent original Google?
#9You mean, like https://www.kagi.com? A search engine you pay for. Every link is there to serve _you_. There are not ads.
Re: Ask HN: Could we just re-invent original Google?
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