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Algolia raises $110M for its search-as-a-service

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Re: Algolia raises $110M for its search-as-a-service

#21

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

apalmer wrote: post #19
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #12

I’ve always had a hard time understanding the value proposition in the same way I don’t understand the value proposition of e.g. AWS Rekognition. Paying per use certainly doesn’t make sense, because it has to be qualified by the accuracy you get per use. And there’s no serious way to understand the accuracy you get per use (on your specific unusual distribution of queries) without employing the expensive ML / stats e…

You are absolutely factually correct in your analysis, but you are completely missing how business works. Fundamentally, there is value to most businesses in being able to just buy a decent solution to a non core competency. That’s where Algolia and AWS and basically all service companies come in... a medium scale clothing manufacturer with a booming e-commerce site may well know they have no clue how to do search, a…

I’m saying in my experience there is no such thing as one singular “decent solution” for search. It varies enormously from use case to use case, customer cohort to customer cohort, etc.

To even know if you’re buying a decent solution from Algolia or not, you’d already have to hire pretty much all the same staff you’d have to hire to more cost-effectively build it in-house.

I think the fundamental myth, just like with Rekognition, is that if you ship off your data and the third party trains some model (most likely fine-tuning a base model), then you’re done, problem solved.

Even for businesses where search is not a core part of their direct value proposition to customers this is flagrantly untrue.

Re: Algolia raises $110M for its search-as-a-service

#22

Post by sniperjzp »

faceshapeapp wrote: post #2

Congrats to the team! Although, am I the only one who finds that searching HN through Google gives better results than searching it through the Algolia powered HN search? For example, search "ml" in both, Algolia results are years old and don't seem that relevant, whereas Google picks up more recent threads.

It feels ironic, I searched "Algolia" from both, today's news is ranked as #7 in Algolia powered HN. From Algolia: https://imgur.com/a/atRMnwj From Google: https://imgur.com/a/d3EKdUp

Some people says it's popularity based, but if I change it to date based, it's broken? https://imgur.com/a/HGzL6fO

Re: Algolia raises $110M for its search-as-a-service

#23

Post by faceshapeapp »

sniperjzp wrote: post #22
faceshapeapp wrote: post #2

Congrats to the team! Although, am I the only one who finds that searching HN through Google gives better results than searching it through the Algolia powered HN search? For example, search "ml" in both, Algolia results are years old and don't seem that relevant, whereas Google picks up more recent threads.

It feels ironic, I searched "Algolia" from both, today's news is ranked as #7 in Algolia powered HN. From Algolia: https://imgur.com/a/atRMnwj From Google: https://imgur.com/a/d3EKdUp Some people says it's popularity based, but if I change it to date based, it's broken? https://imgur.com/a/HGzL6fO

Simply sorting by date doesn't really seem to be that useful either.

For example, the poster below showed the following link for the "ml" query: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....

If you look at the results, the first 2 results only matched part of the poster's username and many of the top results here are empty threads which are not that useful since HN is mostly for discussions.

To be clear, I'm not saying it's all bad, just pointing out that there are low hanging fruits which can improve results quite a bit.

Also, Algolia seems misspelled in your query which is why it fails when reordering by date: https://imgur.com/a/pO9fBWr, it works otherwise. Although, it says the date is 1 day old when it's just 2 hours old.

Re: Algolia raises $110M for its search-as-a-service

#24

Post by hnaccy »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #21
apalmer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are absolutely factually correct in your analysis, but you are completely missing how business works. Fundamentally, there is value to most businesses in being able to just buy a decent solution to a non core competency. That’s where Algolia and AWS and basically all service companies come in... a medium scale clothing manufacturer with a booming e-commerce site may well know they have no clue how to do search, a…

I’m saying in my experience there is no such thing as one singular “decent solution” for search. It varies enormously from use case to use case, customer cohort to customer cohort, etc. To even know if you’re buying a decent solution from Algolia or not, you’d already have to hire pretty much all the same staff you’d have to hire to more cost-effectively build it in-house. I think the fundamental myth, just like with…

>To even know if you’re buying a decent solution from Algolia or not, you’d already have to hire pretty much all the same staff you’d have to hire to more cost-effectively build it in-house.

You just have to pay Algolia, wire up the APIs, and then see if whatever stakeholder that was complaining about search stops complaining. If they do then it's good enough.

Re: Algolia raises $110M for its search-as-a-service

#25

Post by soneca »

faceshapeapp wrote: post #2

Congrats to the team! Although, am I the only one who finds that searching HN through Google gives better results than searching it through the Algolia powered HN search? For example, search "ml" in both, Algolia results are years old and don't seem that relevant, whereas Google picks up more recent threads.

I prefer much more Algolia than Google for searching things in HN.

The customizable stuff are very helpful -- search by user, by type, order stories by popularity or date, etc.

Re: Algolia raises $110M for its search-as-a-service

#28

Post by skybrian »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #21
apalmer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are absolutely factually correct in your analysis, but you are completely missing how business works. Fundamentally, there is value to most businesses in being able to just buy a decent solution to a non core competency. That’s where Algolia and AWS and basically all service companies come in... a medium scale clothing manufacturer with a booming e-commerce site may well know they have no clue how to do search, a…

I’m saying in my experience there is no such thing as one singular “decent solution” for search. It varies enormously from use case to use case, customer cohort to customer cohort, etc. To even know if you’re buying a decent solution from Algolia or not, you’d already have to hire pretty much all the same staff you’d have to hire to more cost-effectively build it in-house. I think the fundamental myth, just like with…

It seems like companies don't have to evaluate it your way? They could informally try it out on a few searches and say, "seems to work better than the other one." This is how Google became popular.

Or maybe do an A/B test. It's a little more formal but doesn't require any search-specific knowledge either.

Re: Algolia raises $110M for its search-as-a-service

#29

Post by wtvanhest »

hnaccy wrote: post #24
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m saying in my experience there is no such thing as one singular “decent solution” for search. It varies enormously from use case to use case, customer cohort to customer cohort, etc. To even know if you’re buying a decent solution from Algolia or not, you’d already have to hire pretty much all the same staff you’d have to hire to more cost-effectively build it in-house. I think the fundamental myth, just like with…

>To even know if you’re buying a decent solution from Algolia or not, you’d already have to hire pretty much all the same staff you’d have to hire to more cost-effectively build it in-house. You just have to pay Algolia, wire up the APIs, and then see if whatever stakeholder that was complaining about search stops complaining. If they do then it's good enough.

This is correct. Lets say you have an ecom site with product search. How do you know if the search is good? You search for stuff and compare to what you expect.

Even if it sucks, as long as their is revenue lift, you will keep it until the next solution comes along.

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