Ask HN: Why doesn't anyone create a search engine comparable to 2005 Google? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't anyone create a search engine comparable to 2005 Google?

#91

Post by greyman » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:00 PM UTC

1) Google is better at AI, for example let's take this sloppy search: "some joke where you can't tell if it is serious or joke"

It is called Poe's law, and Google returned it at #4. Bing or Duckduckgo don't have a clue...

2) They have a years of user's data, like for specific term, they see what users clicked most, so they see which results were perceived as most relevant. It is hard to catch up if you dont have such data.

3) They developed anti-spamming tools during the years of fighting against SEO-spammers.

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't anyone create a search engine comparable to 2005 Google?

#92

Post by MuffinFlavored » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:01 PM UTC

nfriedly wrote: post #59

I think DuckDuckGo is closer to what you want. Same results for everyone, better privacy, and they're proactive about improving their results. https://duckduckgo.com/ Part of the problem is that there's a lot more low-quality content to wade through now than there was in 2005. I think the Google of 2005 would have trouble delivering quality results today also.

> I think the Google of 2005 would have trouble delivering quality results today also.

What would you attribute to their modern 2021 success then? Just throwing a ton of money at amazing engineers to hone in their complex algorithm to tweak it to still return what us humans quantify as "good" results? Especially if they are waning through a sea of low-quality content as you say.

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't anyone create a search engine comparable to 2005 Google?

#93

Post by marginalia_nu » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:01 PM UTC

ginko wrote: post #13

nickpp wrote: post #5

Because we're not having a 2005-Web anymore. More to the point, SEO & Google have evolved together. To have barely relevant results today you need to be good . That takes stellar talent which costs huge amounts of money. Thus, the Google of today, which is optimized to extract that money from us.

But shouldn't all the blogspam be so hyperoptimized for Google's algorithm that is should be straightforward to detect and ignore/downrank it?

Yeah, I do this with my search engine. Works pretty well. A complementary approach that works well is to look at where blogs written by humans link. Very few spam blogs get links from humans.

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't anyone create a search engine comparable to 2005 Google?

#94

Post by garaetjjte » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:01 PM UTC

gbmatt wrote: post #12

Ha, yes, I've done that at https://gigablast.com/ . The biggest problems now are the following: 1) Too hard to spider the web. Gatekeeper companies like Cloudflare (owned in part by Google) and Cloudfront make it really difficult for upstart search engines to download web pages. 2) Hardware costs are too high. It's much more expensive now to build a large index (50B+ pages) to be competitive. I believe my algorithms…

>Gigablast has teamed up with Imperial Family Companies

Associating with that crank (responsible for recent freenode drama) is very off-putting.

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't anyone create a search engine comparable to 2005 Google?

#95

Post by JohnFen » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:02 PM UTC

Kiro wrote: post #76

nfriedly wrote: post #59

I think DuckDuckGo is closer to what you want. Same results for everyone, better privacy, and they're proactive about improving their results. https://duckduckgo.com/ Part of the problem is that there's a lot more low-quality content to wade through now than there was in 2005. I think the Google of 2005 would have trouble delivering quality results today also.

Try searching for the same thing from your computer and your phone and you will get different results. Also, their results come from Bing so any improvement happens at Microsoft.

They do use Bing, but not solely Bing. DDG isn't just a frontend to a different search engine.

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't anyone create a search engine comparable to 2005 Google?

#96

Post by kspacewalk2 » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:02 PM UTC

Sunspark wrote: post #79

nfriedly wrote: post #59

I think DuckDuckGo is closer to what you want. Same results for everyone, better privacy, and they're proactive about improving their results. https://duckduckgo.com/ Part of the problem is that there's a lot more low-quality content to wade through now than there was in 2005. I think the Google of 2005 would have trouble delivering quality results today also.

This. DDG is my primary search engine now and has been for awhile. I don't use Google anymore to search unless I really need to. The algos they use today are not the same classic ones that actually returned results.

And if you really need to, DDG !bangs[0] make a search as simple as "!g mother google help me". The keyword thing is also available in Firefox as a browser feature, and elsewhere I'm sure, but nevertheless, it makes switching to DDG easier.

(Plus I can directly go to the wiki page by using "!w", "!gm" for google maps, etc.)

[0] https://duckduckgo.com/bang

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't anyone create a search engine comparable to 2005 Google?

#97

Post by gbmatt » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:02 PM UTC

nfriedly wrote: post #59

I think DuckDuckGo is closer to what you want. Same results for everyone, better privacy, and they're proactive about improving their results. https://duckduckgo.com/ Part of the problem is that there's a lot more low-quality content to wade through now than there was in 2005. I think the Google of 2005 would have trouble delivering quality results today also.

both ddg and brave are bing (microsoft) in disguise.

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't anyone create a search engine comparable to 2005 Google?

#98

Post by ricardo81 » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:02 PM UTC

nfriedly wrote: post #59

I think DuckDuckGo is closer to what you want. Same results for everyone, better privacy, and they're proactive about improving their results. https://duckduckgo.com/ Part of the problem is that there's a lot more low-quality content to wade through now than there was in 2005. I think the Google of 2005 would have trouble delivering quality results today also.

Does DDG have any of its own organic results yet, or is it still entirely Bing/Yandex?

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't anyone create a search engine comparable to 2005 Google?

#99

Post by thisisnotatest » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:02 PM UTC

nickpp wrote: post #5

Because we're not having a 2005-Web anymore. More to the point, SEO & Google have evolved together. To have barely relevant results today you need to be good . That takes stellar talent which costs huge amounts of money. Thus, the Google of today, which is optimized to extract that money from us.

Yes, I think you'd call it a Red Queen Problem:

“Here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.”

-Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't anyone create a search engine comparable to 2005 Google?

#100

Post by DavideNL » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:02 PM UTC

nfriedly wrote: post #59

I think DuckDuckGo is closer to what you want. Same results for everyone, better privacy, and they're proactive about improving their results. https://duckduckgo.com/ Part of the problem is that there's a lot more low-quality content to wade through now than there was in 2005. I think the Google of 2005 would have trouble delivering quality results today also.

> a lot more low-quality content

I wish there was an easy way to filter ALL search results, by permanently excluding specific websites, and/or keywords.

Surely there has to be some browser extension that does this...