The world needs a non-profit search engine • Hacker News Board

Re: The world needs a non-profit search engine

#241

Post by Kinrany » Sun, Jul 10, 2022, 12:05 PM UTC

jstummbillig wrote: post #218

nonameking2026 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allow users to blacklist sites. Share blacklisted sites. Have the option of instead of hiding blacklisted sites entirely - show them in a different column. Have 4 different types of list. Whitelist - highest scoring Not listed - these websites are not ranked. Yellowlist - show but keep in a separate column Blacklist - don't show https://search.brave.com/help/goggles is interesting.

How do you prevent the gaming of blacklisting?

Source lists from friends-of-friends.

Re: The world needs a non-profit search engine

#242

Post by O__________O » Sun, Jul 10, 2022, 12:08 PM UTC

larsrc wrote: post #155

Disclaimer: I work for Google, though far away from Search. Regardless of search engine design, there's HUGE money in SEO. Any successful search engine will be gamed. Do you have the developer power to go red-queen against all the large companies in the world?

For clarification, “red queen” means a conflict between two or more entities where the cost of engagement grows, but the relative advantage does not change.

Simply put, search engines have been at war with SEO for over 30-years, which has significantly raised the bar not only being a search engine, but producing content; not to mention knowing how to search for information. With the introduction of machine generated content, information wars between countries, global dependence of online commerce & information, etc — the speed of change shows no signs of letting up.

In my opinion, for the average person, knowing how to search for information is the real issue, not that the quality of information available has become worse or that Google has become a worse search engine. If anything, Google has reduced its advantage search capabilities not for financial gain, but because average user is just too lazy to learn how to search and keep up with changes required to continue to be an advanced searcher.

Re: The world needs a non-profit search engine

#243

Post by GekkePrutser » Sun, Jul 10, 2022, 12:08 PM UTC

ThunderSizzle wrote: post #160

closedloop129 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you limit accounts to real people and then keep track of their credibility? It's some initial effort but how could the ranking be manipulated when all dishonest people have burned their credibility?

The internet-should-be-anonymous crowd wouldn't like that. But it's no worse than Google tracking everything A-Z.

I'm very much part of that community but I could see verified moderators using it.

However it could just be reputation based like on Wikipedia

Re: The world needs a non-profit search engine

#244

Post by christophilus » Sun, Jul 10, 2022, 12:09 PM UTC

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #94

unicornporn wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I use duck duck go. You use a proxied Bing. If you want a proxied Google (what I prefer), you can use https://startpage.com

Is DDG proxied bing? I found DDG search results to be much better than bing.

No. It’s Bing in the same way that Uber is Elastic Search. It’s built on Bing and other tools and adds, tweaks, adjusts, etc. Calling DDG a Bing proxy is somewhere between misleading and dishonest.

Re: The world needs a non-profit search engine

#245

Post by geekamongus » Sun, Jul 10, 2022, 12:10 PM UTC

> Google has an incentive to rank pages that contain Google ads because it makes them more revenue. Google has an incentive to rank profit-making sites higher so that they make more money.

Is there evidence that they do this?

Re: The world needs a non-profit search engine

#246

Post by Pakdef » Sun, Jul 10, 2022, 12:22 PM UTC

ffguuficc wrote: post #17

TheChaplain wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have family members who use google to navigate. Instead of writing facebook.com in the URL-bar, they search for facebook and click the first link...

Honestly that is probably safer. Having a typo in the url could Easley give you a phishing link. However, I also have gotten fishing adds when looking websites up so it’s not cut and dry at all.

The second time, they only have to type "f" in the address bar, since they probably don't clear their history...

Re: The world needs a non-profit search engine

#247

Post by ancientsofmumu » Sun, Jul 10, 2022, 12:23 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #166

larsrc wrote: post #155

Disclaimer: I work for Google, though far away from Search. Regardless of search engine design, there's HUGE money in SEO. Any successful search engine will be gamed. Do you have the developer power to go red-queen against all the large companies in the world?

I think Google search is using the wrong approach. When I'm looking for e.g. a new camera, I want to use my network which I trust . E.g. I want to ask "what camera would HN recommend?" We should think more about how we can use trust as a basis for how we explore the internet.

I put your search into SearX with a lot of the major engines enabled (Google, Bing, Qwant, Brave, DDG, etc.). Arguably, Google did a better job giving me HN results (but it's a very small sample set).

https://searx.be/search?q=what%20camera%20would%20HN%20recom...

Results 1-3: SEO "best cameras" from DDG, Qwant

Result 4: Ask HN from DDG, Qwant

Result 5: Ask HN from Google

Results 6-8: SEO "best cameras" from DDG, Qwant

Result 9: Ask HN from Google

Result 10: Camera forum from DDG, Qwant

Edit: if you're not familiar with SearX, everyone who visits will get a slightly different result based on dynamic results. Even if the same person refreshes a few times the exact results and ordering will vary; I've learned to try the same search a few times to get better results, it's just a quirk of how it works and how each remote engine reacts at that given instant.

Re: The world needs a non-profit search engine

#248

Post by Pakdef » Sun, Jul 10, 2022, 12:24 PM UTC

laserbeam wrote: post #208

> [google gets 40 billion a year from search.] I can’t even conceive how big it is. Just 1% of 1% of this would be more money than I’d know what to do with ($4m). Ouch. I wish you the best but that statement makes me lose hope. Employees are expensive. Servers aren't exactly cheap either. And unexpected mistakes along theyl way cost a lot.

> Employees are expensive.

Google has too many of them and it's probably why Google Search is not improving.

Re: The world needs a non-profit search engine

#249

Post by javajosh » Sun, Jul 10, 2022, 12:24 PM UTC

>Google makes $40bn...If I can create something that just a tiny fraction of people find useful, then I can create a huge amount of value.

You conflate two meanings of value: monetary value, and intrinsic value. Search engines are intrinsically but not monetarily valuable to users. Search engines are monetarily, but not intrinsically, valuable to advertisers. You can get into trouble when you conflate these two meaning of "value".

In fact, right here is the pivot on which the internet goes from an idealistic shang-ri-la for geeks, to a commercial hellscape for the unwashed masses. It is surprisingly easy to create intrinsic value with computers! You see it all day every day on HN: some geek had a thought, spends a weekend making it, and then deploys a solution.

It is surprisingly hard to extract monetary value from an intrinsically valuable solution. In fact, I believe that creating artificial scarcity is the hardest part of building an internet business, requiring invention on par with the intrinsically valuable part - and yet its the very thing that idealists rail against.

(And making something artificially scarce does seem morally repugnant. And yet I don't see any other way to pay developers. Full stop. Open source software + consulting fees is a good way to go, but that can't apply to hosted search for the public. Well I guess it could, you could teach businesses how to game your own engine!)

Re: The world needs a non-profit search engine

#250

Post by amelius » Sun, Jul 10, 2022, 12:26 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #194

amelius wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trust can work both ways. They'd have to be really careful to not lose the earned trust. On the way, they would have to write a lot of high quality HN posts. I'd say this model is a win over current spamming and fake reviewing practices.

The other side of them having to write a lot of high quality HN posts is me having to read and evaluate more HN posts trying to game me. That is work, and if I sense a lot of it (like I did on Reddit), I will leave, and I suspect others would too. Playing defense is exhausting when playing offense is extremely cheap.

> Playing defense is exhausting when playing offense is extremely cheap.

HN is quite a large crowd, but not extremely big. An attacker must penetrate a lot of small crowds to be successful.