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The next Google

dkb.io

151–160 of 561 posts

Re: The next Google

#151

I just went on a mini vacation to Vegas, and was thinking how nice it would be to just call up someone and ask for some simple advice. I did a bunch of online research before I booked things, but man was it painful. There are so many copy-cat blogs who just throw together a bunch of basic information with no real research done in order to get those clicks/adwords. For example: best hotel pool in vegas. Seems simple e…

I find reddit works remarkably well for this. I've gotten great actionable recommendations within an hour or two for: - good coffeeshops - tacos - Korean grocery stores - places that have traditional style al pastor tacos - finding a specific coffee brand at a local grocery store - finding EDM songs similar to a particular song (dullscythe) - hot chicken - canolis and a bunch more similar things. I would think if you…

This tends to work for me as well but signal vs noise ratio has worsened over time. Despite Reddit's questionable decisions in the past years it still has useful information for all sorts of things.

Reddit's own search has become less reliable so I search via DDG like ` 'site:reddit.com'`, falling back to `!g 'site:reddit.com'` if the former doesn't get me anywhere.

Re: The next Google

#152

There's an opportunity for helping with enterprise data. There's: - Files (Box/DropBox/Google Drive/SharePoint) - Static(ish) Pages (Wikis/internal CMS's/Actual websites hosted on some random nginx/apache) - Web Apps (eg Internal Learning Platforms or helper HR apps or whatever) - Chat (Slack/Discord/Teams/??) - Email - Files stored on my actual laptop - Source Control (eg GitHub/GitLab/whatever ... which have their…

I agree 100% but for corporate usecases many would be slightly uncomfortable giving Google (or a competitor) access to all of those to search though

Re: The next Google

#153

There's an opportunity for helping with enterprise data. There's: - Files (Box/DropBox/Google Drive/SharePoint) - Static(ish) Pages (Wikis/internal CMS's/Actual websites hosted on some random nginx/apache) - Web Apps (eg Internal Learning Platforms or helper HR apps or whatever) - Chat (Slack/Discord/Teams/??) - Email - Files stored on my actual laptop - Source Control (eg GitHub/GitLab/whatever ... which have their…

Remember Google Desktop? I want Google Desktop back. (Google Desktop was discontinued in 2011.)

Re: The next Google

#154

These solutions don't answer any of the fundamental problems with Google: - who pays for the service (ads? users pay? Average user will never use a paid service if a free one is available) - how to resist attacks against the algorithm (Google has been fighting spam for decades) - how to personalize without invading privacy, e.g. Google had an option to search through your email in Google search...it's gone now, I won…

> - who pays for the service (ads? users pay? Average user will never use a paid service if a free one is available) - how to resist attacks against the algorithm (Google has been fighting spam for decades) The solution for o both of these might actually be a paid service. If you have a paid service, there is a possibility of it being profitable with much fewer users. As an example, let’s say you have 1,000,000 users…

The spam issue can trivially be addressed by implementing actual penalties for rule-breakers. If it takes a long time to acquire a good reputation & ranking on the search engine, you're unlikely to risk it by doing something nasty in fear of your domain, keyword or brand name being banned for a long time.

Re: The next Google

#155

I just went on a mini vacation to Vegas, and was thinking how nice it would be to just call up someone and ask for some simple advice. I did a bunch of online research before I booked things, but man was it painful. There are so many copy-cat blogs who just throw together a bunch of basic information with no real research done in order to get those clicks/adwords. For example: best hotel pool in vegas. Seems simple e…

I find reddit works remarkably well for this. I've gotten great actionable recommendations within an hour or two for: - good coffeeshops - tacos - Korean grocery stores - places that have traditional style al pastor tacos - finding a specific coffee brand at a local grocery store - finding EDM songs similar to a particular song (dullscythe) - hot chicken - canolis and a bunch more similar things. I would think if you…

That's because Reddit is one of the few places left on the web that is open (aka: not a walled-garden like Facebook) and has people talking to people without financial incentive. HN is another.

Reddit is changing fast though. It's becoming more walled-off every day as they push to become the next Pinterest, and it's increasingly plagued with spam and bad actors.

Google brought this upon us by lifting SEO spam websites to the front page while pushing down helpful websites written by humans without incentive, like Ask MetaFilter.

Re: The next Google

#156
The next Google should be powered by AI/ML algorithms to go around SEO tricks. If lots of people pick a result from page 16 that result should be on the front page.

Re: The next Google

#157

I just went on a mini vacation to Vegas, and was thinking how nice it would be to just call up someone and ask for some simple advice. I did a bunch of online research before I booked things, but man was it painful. There are so many copy-cat blogs who just throw together a bunch of basic information with no real research done in order to get those clicks/adwords. For example: best hotel pool in vegas. Seems simple e…

[deleted]

Re: The next Google

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a simple box where you put a question in and it gives you answers Google is very good at this, but this is exactly what I _don't_ want in the "Next Google". I want a _search engine_ for the web, not an answers engine that tries to know what I want better than I do. Search the web. Give me links to websites. This seems obvious to me, but everyone is trying to be like Google. I'm convinced the death of the web and in…

The death of the web is because most people don't want what you want. They don't mind walled gardens, so long as they are easy to use and have the content and connections that they want to see. The audience of HN is extremely skewed towards preferring systems that allow tinkering but that's not what the market wants.

People don't mind walled gardens because for a while they've been good enough if not better than the previous status-quo. However, those walled gardens are decaying such that there might actually be demand for something better if it existed.

Re: The next Google

#159
post #22

These solutions don't answer any of the fundamental problems with Google: - who pays for the service (ads? users pay? Average user will never use a paid service if a free one is available) - how to resist attacks against the algorithm (Google has been fighting spam for decades) - how to personalize without invading privacy, e.g. Google had an option to search through your email in Google search...it's gone now, I won…

Kagi is "users pay". Yes, average users won't pay, but I don't see how that matters to me as a Kagi user.

I guess it depends on whether you consider "The Next Google" to imply that it becomes a the dominant company in the space, used by every "average user", or if it's enough to be a niche solution for highly technical users who prefer it to Google.

Re: The next Google

#160
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of profiles for "people". This is the thing. I'm the power user in my circle. People comes to me for suggestions about pretty much anything involving tech. Sometimes just because they see me with different stuff. So if I'm not the average user I may look for other options, as other people like me may do. If I find such options reasonable for the average user, that will be my recommendation to them.

Tiktok didn't dominate by appealing to niche tech power users.

TikTok's purpose and use-case is completely different from that of a search engine.
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