81–90 of 146 posts
http://www.yandex.com is a real competitor
Nine results were about the space-partitioning data structure. Also, there is a tree-trimming service on Long Island called K&D Tree Masters.
Surprisingly, pleasantly -- all ten items are useful to me.
Part of the problem is that Google's PageRank algorithm is patented and the patent won't expire until 2017. Google insists that its current search mix is based on a lot more than just PageRank, but it seems that PageRank probably contributes the foundation of their business. I don't see a way of competing with Google's results unless we are allowed to use something like PageRank, which we can't do unless we pay royal…
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That theory - infinite competition and zero switching costs - seems to be completely ungrounded in any kind of reality.
There's a whole issue of what the definition of 'using google' is to people. Even if I never search with Google, I'm still often using google stuff - or, more precisely, Google services are using/tracking me . And there's no obvious way to turn it off or opt out of it.
Part of the problem is that Google's PageRank algorithm is patented and the patent won't expire until 2017. Google insists that its current search mix is based on a lot more than just PageRank, but it seems that PageRank probably contributes the foundation of their business. I don't see a way of competing with Google's results unless we are allowed to use something like PageRank, which we can't do unless we pay royal…
I didn't realise this. Is this really enforceable? One of the tools that Moz sells is their PR proxy, opensiteexplorer. I wonder how they're able to replicate PR without running afoul of this? Also, is PR really the best, only way to do this? Seems like there are all kinds of better (more modern) signals we could use other than links, which were kind of the only game in town 10ish years ago.
or: We need an inclusionist wikipedia - where every possible search term starts with an empty page/any possible search term would have an entry, even if it's just for redirecting a spelling mistake. Eventually every search term would grow its own little community of experts. Unfortunately, as pg said, "Deletionists rule Wikipedia."
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> Thought experiment: what could that disruptive niche be? Someone needs to write/buy a search engine and then build a really rich API into the internals of it that lets 3rd parties write customized search engines. How about an auto parts search engine, or a search engine for spanish-speaking people living in southern california? What about a Christian search engine, or a meme search engine? When someone can empower…
Sounds like Yahoo Boss: http://developer.yahoo.com/boss/ And that's been around for years already. Essentially, you get the Yahoo results, and decorate, filter, reorganise, improve, combine as you wish. So you get the organic results, which you can then innovate upon. And it has survived the transition from Yahoo-powered search results, to Bing powered search results: http://searchengineland.com/yahoo-boss-moves-from…
But doesn't seem to allow you to do write your own indexing, ranking, and querying algorithms, which is the kind of thing I'm talking about.
The dominating cost is not hiring smart people to work on the problem, it's hiring enough smart people to work on the problem.
Consider. Here at Microsoft, we employ a search relevance staff of -- what, 20% the size of Google's? And Google's engineers are rock solid. MS might be able to make up a small margin, but our search relevance staff -- good though they are -- cannot compete with a brilliant workforce that is 5 times larger than them. If we are going to actually compete with Google, the problem is not hiring smart people, it's hiring 5 times the current number of smart people employed for this task at MS.
Never mind buying such a team. MS can afford that. How do you even find that many people in 2-3 years?
When you consider the rest of the data, the case for building something like Google really begins to look grim. For example, how much does it really cost to build a search engine? We've poured at least tens of millions of dollars into just search relevance (I'm not even counting infrastructure). That's good mileage, considering that this way is littered with the corpses of companies like Cuil, who made investments in this area and failed miserably. Still, while this has been a great deal for us, we're still not there yet, and it's not clear we will be in the very near future. And so it's worth wondering: if MS can't buy something like that, realistically, who can? DDG? lol no.
In the end, this is the true dominating cost of building a search engine: people capital. Other bottlenecks, like engineering debt, politics, etc. pale against the sheer, awe-inspiring investment of Google in people capital.
One of the viable venues to compete with Google is not by developing "new, better search engine", but rather "better vertical platform". What's the best search engine where buyers go? Not google.com and never really been google, it's amazon.com and ebay.com. What's the best search engine to find answers on technical questions? Stackoverflow.com is approaching google very fast. So the answer would be for sharp minds t…
The comments here about building search engines that viably compete with Google in terms of quality are hilariously wrong. Hilariously wrong. The dominating cost is not hiring smart people to work on the problem, it's hiring enough smart people to work on the problem. Consider. Here at Microsoft, we employ a search relevance staff of -- what, 20% the size of Google's? And Google's engineers are rock solid. MS might b…
If you want search engine competition you have to take Google's Ad business away.
Its weird I know but Google's search ads pay $80 - $100 RPMs and other guys ads pay $30 RPMs. If Microsoft could use Google's ad network they would be a solid contributor to the bottom line of Microsoft (which is why they can't of course).
If you could magically peel that Ad network/agency into its own entity and require it to give non-discriminatory terms to everyone, I believe we would have a pretty vibrant search space. My reasoning there is that the money associated with search advertising would fall into buckets that were much more closely aligned with market share, as opposed to today where someone like Microsoft can have a large share of the search 'eyeballs' but only a fraction of the revenue because their Ads don't have the RPM numbers.
or: We need an inclusionist wikipedia - where every possible search term starts with an empty page/any possible search term would have an entry, even if it's just for redirecting a spelling mistake. Eventually every search term would grow its own little community of experts. Unfortunately, as pg said, "Deletionists rule Wikipedia."