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Building a Search Engine from Scratch

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Re: Building a Search Engine from Scratch

#61

Post by dylan604 »

big_chungus wrote: post #53
josephpmay wrote: post #51

I'd never heard of Cliqz before, but just did a couple of test searches, and I'm honestly super impressed with the results. I found the result relevancy seemed to be closer to Google than DDG/Bing

Maybe so, but honestly, the name is putting me off more than anything. It just doesn't sound professional, and causes me to perceive it as shady, even if it's not. The name also makes it sound like it's more about marketing "clicks" to advertisers than providing good results. None of that is necessarily true, but it's the impression the name gives. It needs to re-brand.

Like DuckDuckGo is any better? I understand where you are coming from using the "z" for lulz/kool factor. At least they left a vowel in the name.

Re: Building a Search Engine from Scratch

#62

Post by commoner »

adventskalender wrote: post #42
commoner wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article describes techniques used by all search engines, not just Google. Search engines have existed before Google, and despite Google's monopoly on search, "Google clone" is a poor term to describe all search engines when alternatives with unique features (e.g. DuckDuckGo) exist.

How many real alternatives exist, though? DuckDuckGo is based on Bing, afaik. So there are Google and Bing - any others?

There are also Baidu and Yandex, which dominate China and Russia, respectively.

https://www.baidu.com

https://yandex.com

Qwant is a France-based search engine that has a similar privacy focus to DuckDuckGo.

https://www.qwant.com

Million Short tries to find sites that other search engines miss.

https://millionshort.com

Wikipedia has a more comprehensive list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines

Re: Building a Search Engine from Scratch

#63

Post by ummonk »

dylan604 wrote: post #61
big_chungus wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe so, but honestly, the name is putting me off more than anything. It just doesn't sound professional, and causes me to perceive it as shady, even if it's not. The name also makes it sound like it's more about marketing "clicks" to advertisers than providing good results. None of that is necessarily true, but it's the impression the name gives. It needs to re-brand.

Like DuckDuckGo is any better? I understand where you are coming from using the "z" for lulz/kool factor. At least they left a vowel in the name.

Yeah, Cliqz seems well within the range of trendy website names, unlike DuckDuckGo.

Re: Building a Search Engine from Scratch

#64

Post by ummonk »

Aeolun wrote: post #59
725686 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the name "Google" definitely sounds more professional....not.

It does though. There’s a ton of services using a deliberate misspelling in their name and all of them are meh at best in my experience.

You do realize Google is a misspelling of googol right?

Re: Building a Search Engine from Scratch

#65

Post by Aeolun »

zaphod12 wrote: post #60
Aeolun wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does though. There’s a ton of services using a deliberate misspelling in their name and all of them are meh at best in my experience.

this is 100% because you've become inured to how strange it is. Google's name was a joke when it started.

That may be true, but Google started when I didn’t have similar preconceptions based on name yet. The trend of calling something Trackr, Suprnova etc. didn’t exist.

Now any service with a name like that seems shit compared to more readable/writeable names: Stackoverflow, Quora, datadog.

Case in point is srht.co, which rebranded to Sourcehut for similar reasons.

Re: Building a Search Engine from Scratch

#66

Post by tschakkaMarc »

big_chungus wrote: post #53
josephpmay wrote: post #51

I'd never heard of Cliqz before, but just did a couple of test searches, and I'm honestly super impressed with the results. I found the result relevancy seemed to be closer to Google than DDG/Bing

Maybe so, but honestly, the name is putting me off more than anything. It just doesn't sound professional, and causes me to perceive it as shady, even if it's not. The name also makes it sound like it's more about marketing "clicks" to advertisers than providing good results. None of that is necessarily true, but it's the impression the name gives. It needs to re-brand.

It’s the one time where I can honestly say: The discussion we’re having within Cliqz about our brand name are even more heated and controversial than here on Hacker News (and Reddit for that matter) ... but then there is this saying: “Every brand name is shit until you surpass one billion users - than it becomes brilliant”. More seriously: we do think about it a lot - happy to get ideas.

Re: Building a Search Engine from Scratch

#67

Post by jdck1326 »

umvi wrote: post #38
bla3 wrote: post #29

That Cliqz is trying to actually build a new search stack is commendable. This is way more exciting to me than DuckDuckGo and other services that just package up Bing search results under different branding. I'm skeptical that they'll be successful, but I wish them the best. They should market (and engineer) strongly on privacy since that's where Google is weak.

> They should market (and engineer) strongly on privacy since that's where Google is weak. How can you build a privacy oriented search engine and still make money?

If one didn't mind breaking even rather than making money one could create a search engine which is free software and have groups/people host their own instances.

Re: Building a Search Engine from Scratch

#68

Post by noobermin »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #56
solso wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Disclaimer: I work at Cliqz] Hi, I read the thread and thought the answer was good enough, but it seems that you are not yet convinced. Let me try: 1) Here there is a list of publications regarding privacy by Cliqz (including published scientific papers). It should have fairly easy to find it using a search engine :-) https://0x65.dev/pages/dissemination-cliqz.html Hopefully, the paper will convince you that Cliqz p…

What’s your business model? Cliqz seems to employ more than 120 people and I can’t find any mention of how you’ll make money.

However they do it, they clearly don't money tracking people at this stage given no one knows or uses Cliqz.

Re: Building a Search Engine from Scratch

#69

Post by solso »

lawl wrote: post #58
solso wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Disclaimer I work for Cliqz] Copying, learning would be a bit more precise, and I'm not kidding. We do not answer queries 1 to 1, query-logs are used to build a more concise model of the page. It's not just a cache, we started like this, but we quickly learn to answer unseen queries. A sufficient strict IP might find text snipped a copyright violation too. It's a trick area. Personally, I'm at peace as we get the co…

> A sufficient strict IP might find text snipped a copyright violation too. It's a trick area. Personally, I'm at peace as we get the content of web pages, as everyone else. Interesting you bring this up. Wasn't the company funding cliqz in favor of text snippets being copyright violations when the big G does it? (German/EU Leistungsschutzrecht) [0] I mean, I think bootstrapping from google query logs is fine, but fo…

[Disclaimer I work for Cliqz] This is 100% personal opinion, not a spokesman neither for Cliqz nor Burda.

As all German media? Yes, it seems that they were lobbying for it, not clear if they still are part of the consortium or not. Why? No idea, really. Perhaps they are diversifying, lobbying on one hand, trying to build a competitor with another. But to make an assessment of the "goodness" of their intentions I prefer to stick to the facts: besides complaining to regulators, or not, they do fund a potential alternative. That's very commendable, cannot name many companies that are crazy/adventurous enough to put a ton of money on something as risky as what Cliqz is trying to do. To sum up, if the lobbying is a minus, the building is a massive plus, a clear positive outcome IMHO.

Re: Building a Search Engine from Scratch

#70

Post by alanbernstein »

big_chungus wrote: post #53
josephpmay wrote: post #51

I'd never heard of Cliqz before, but just did a couple of test searches, and I'm honestly super impressed with the results. I found the result relevancy seemed to be closer to Google than DDG/Bing

Maybe so, but honestly, the name is putting me off more than anything. It just doesn't sound professional, and causes me to perceive it as shady, even if it's not. The name also makes it sound like it's more about marketing "clicks" to advertisers than providing good results. None of that is necessarily true, but it's the impression the name gives. It needs to re-brand.

In 2003, a friend told me she ignored Firefox because "it sounds like it was named by an eight-year-old boy". My response: who cares? Why does that matter in the slightest? Is "Internet Explorer" really better? Would you prefer a search engine called "Web Searcher Site"?
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