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The next Google
241–250 of 561 posts
Re: The next Google
#242I think 'more customization' which is a theme with a lot of these alternatives is a fundamental dead end. I don't know where this persistent myth comes from that people love choice and tinkering, because they clearly don't. There's a huge cost associated with having to make choices, and one feature of successful modern apps is that they're frictionless. That's why TikTok is so successful. There's no login, no user ch…
> That's why TikTok is so successful. More likely, it exploits human's cognitive weaknesses successfully with a simple way. It learns how how people get their dopamine dose. And there is no going back. You need more and more, more extreme content. More polarization. All you need to do is to open app and get that dose. Is it the same for search engine? And people make more crazy stuff to get views. How this ends? Not…
>You need more and more, more extreme content. More polarization.
This seems a little sensational. Many people (myself and most of my friends included) don't see _any_ "extreme" content or polarization. A quick scroll through my feed is largely nothing but magnet fishing, frog tracking, cats, DIY projects, and geologists talking about rocks. It's enjoyable and arguably a dopamine dose on-demand, but not necessarily a road down more "extreme content and polarization".
Re: The next Google
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh AI is the future of search? Maybe. I think the bigger reason why search isn’t getting much better is that incremental technical improvements are being offset by Google trading their dominance for greater shareholder value. A safe business can take away or buy-and-bury features that are better for the customer but worse for the business’s top line. Things like the Power Search API, or search that integrates with ot…
NLP generative models that you can interrogate with natural language prompts, and which generate coherent responses together with citations for sources, is definitely the future of search. I don't know anything about AI or the relationship between market participation and innovation. All I know is that LLMs are a useful tool that is already displacing search in many parts of my life.
I see. These sound like two different products, Google Search vs Google Scholar. I can imagine AI + natural language processing is dramatically changing search performance of dense-detailed text.
Re: The next Google
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
Out of curiosity, how much disk space does your index currently use, and what's the storage hardware (SSD or spinning rust)?
The reverse index is 180 Gb, on an SSD. I do think using SSDs are a major part of why this is possible on consumer hardware. I'd need a lot of spinning rust to get the sub-100ms response times I can get it to when the index is warmed up. Should be said I do wear through this SSD at a pretty alarming rate. I'm at 193 TBW on this disk since I started using it as an index less than a year ago. I do have a bunch of mecha…
Thanks - I'd be keen to try this at some point, if anything just for personal usage. I've got more than enough hardware CPU & RAM-wise, if all it takes is getting a few TBs worth of solid-state storage it seems like a no-brainer.
Re: The next Google
#245Earlier 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.
I think you’re conflating “tinkering” with simply desiring a different feature set. In my case I actually want “less” from Google in terms of number of features. I don’t want to tinker either, but we naturally reach for toggles as a way to tell the system we want different (not necessarily more) features.
Most of my search results at this point look like a spam ridden inbox from the mid-2000s.
Re: The next Google
#246I've been using you.com for a couple of months now and I think it has a lot of potential for one reason: choice. You can choose to be in private mode where they don't track you or you can choose to see some sites higher than others. Feels more customizable and the layout feels new
I love you.com mobile app, just saw that they made a layout update, really cool
Re: The next Google
#247None of these seem like the next Google. Too complicated.
The earlier Google, when Google was at its best in both performance and results, was incredibly simple. It indexed the entire web. It returned keyword matched results based on relevancy. There was no customization required. No editorialized results. No Big Brothering the user against thoughtcrime or wrongthink. No promotion of The Current Thing. Just information, whether good or bad, true or false, as a search engine should be.
Something that can replicate that will have a good chance of success, but I think the longstanding challenge to both Google and competitors is how to rank material in an increasingly siloed and ideological web filled with agendas, astroturfing, SEO optimization, and spam.
Re: The next Google
#248I think 'more customization' which is a theme with a lot of these alternatives is a fundamental dead end. I don't know where this persistent myth comes from that people love choice and tinkering, because they clearly don't. There's a huge cost associated with having to make choices, and one feature of successful modern apps is that they're frictionless. That's why TikTok is so successful. There's no login, no user ch…
I think 'more customization' which is a theme with a lot of these alternatives is a fundamental dead end.
I tend to agree. It's an attempt to deal with bad design by putting in switches, options, and knobs to tweak. That's because 1) it's easier than focus groups, A/B testing, and taking video of users using the thing, 2) design takes some artistic talent, and 3) it lets the programmer blame the users for the problem.
This is a vice of open source people. It's why Linux on the desktop has never taken off. "Just edit /etc/conf/foo/bar/prefs.txt" is not a design. Nor is "On the visual side, you can modify everything about the way things look, even being able to write your own custom CSS."
I'm critical of Google's search, but this is not the way to fix it.
Consider just few more search options, alongside "News", such as "Scholar" and "Noncommercial", for when you're overwhelmed by crap. And "Popular", for when you want the crap. Don't add another interacting dimension of tweaking.
Re: The next Google
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Reddit's own search has become less reliable Not sure what you mean... It's always been an absolute pile of shit
Yea I always just put in the question I want into DDG and then just add reddit in the end. It's so much better than any blog or anything because at least it gives the semblance of real users giving their opinion.
What is DDG?
Re: The next Google
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. Give me relevant links to my term, with no SEO spam. Don't correct my term, especially when I'm searching verbatim (which I almost always want). It'd also be nice to be able to downvote certain results.
> Give me relevant links to my term, with no SEO spam I think achieving this would be worth billions, at least? We really tend to underestimate the amount of spam on the internet. Google does badly here: it overcorrects and you get only super safe results. Yandex? Unless you get lucky, lots of spam.
This is one of the reasons I love working for You.com.
SEO is killing Google and it needs to be addressed before it kills the internet. Having the opportunity to build an app that solves a search, instead of perpetuating a spam system, has been really rewarding... and we're just getting started.