We Need Viable Search Engine Competition • Hacker News Board

Re: We Need Viable Search Engine Competition

#101

Post by nashequilibrium » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 9:44 PM UTC

antics wrote: post #87

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…

Honestly, the problem is that microsoft built a search engine like google, which needed to reach feature parity and until parity is reached consumers have no reason to use it. If feature parity is used, consumers have no reason to switch as the cost of switching does not outweigh the benefits of it, therefore you have an unnecessary product that you have to pump a shit load of advertising on, which creates more costs and no revenue.

The correct way, I believe, is to compete on non-consumption and capture those users, therefore you start small and execute well and scale up as users grow. You avoid the comparison to Google and can sneak in the back door without the crazy upfront costs. Imagine if microsoft focused on Knowledge graph before google did? It would be very interesting times, but every google competitor just competes head on. At the end of the day its about getting users and they don't care about the slight change in your algo, only in the way they feel when using your product i.e frustration, delight, anger, surprise, etc!

Re: We Need Viable Search Engine Competition

#102

Post by nashequilibrium » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 9:52 PM UTC

Isofarro wrote: post #77

erikpukinskis wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Yahoo screwed up so bad here, read the research papers coming out of labs.yahoo.com back then and you realize they were onto knowledgraph before Google and actually had a head start, but they shattered their research division and lost a lot of those search people to microsoft and google. They just didn't have faith to create their own path and also lost their identity by deciding to become an entertainment company.

Re: We Need Viable Search Engine Competition

#103

Post by antics » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 9:56 PM UTC

nashequilibrium wrote: post #101

antics wrote: post #87

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…

Honestly, the problem is that microsoft built a search engine like google, which needed to reach feature parity and until parity is reached consumers have no reason to use it. If feature parity is used, consumers have no reason to switch as the cost of switching does not outweigh the benefits of it, therefore you have an unnecessary product that you have to pump a shit load of advertising on, which creates more costs…

The advantage of being a startup is precisely that your mission need not cohere with the investments of a large corporation. You can do what you like.

From MS's perspective (again: I work here, but my opinions my own blah blah) the problem is this. People use computers to access the Internet. MS can't just be the OS and the browser used to access the Internet to maintain its lofty position as a field leader -- if MS's job is to supply the Internet as a service to people on MS devices, then it is mission-critical that it also be the landing page of the Internet. If MS gives up Bing, it might as well give up all consumer investments IMHO.

It is (IMHO) more important that Bing exists and is mostly functional than it is that Bing is equal or better to Google in every way.

Of course it is a huge priority to make Bing a viable threat in its own right, but what I'm saying is that this is not the only consideration.

Re: We Need Viable Search Engine Competition

#104

Post by srathi » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 10:05 PM UTC

jorgecastillo wrote: post #42

I don't think anything can compete with Google when it comes to search in English. I almost feel like Google can read my mind. With the adequate query you can find anything you've ever read on the internet if it's still online. Yesterday night I wanted to re-read a blog post about a guy that made a few bucks with QNX, but I didn't remember much I tried a few queries and I got the expected blog post with this: https:/…

I feel the same. I wanted to find a video about a zombie prank in a New York cafe and did a Google search for it. The first result was the actual video that I needed.[1]

Needless to say, Bing fails here.[2]

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=telekinesis+prank [2] http://www.bing.com/search?q=telekinesis+prank

Re: We Need Viable Search Engine Competition

#105

Post by naner » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 10:09 PM UTC

antics wrote: post #87

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…

What about targeted search engines? Google has gotten progressively worse for technical searches as it has been improving generalized "what you mean" searches for everybody else.

Re: We Need Viable Search Engine Competition

#106

Post by nashequilibrium » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 10:10 PM UTC

antics wrote: post #103

nashequilibrium wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, the problem is that microsoft built a search engine like google, which needed to reach feature parity and until parity is reached consumers have no reason to use it. If feature parity is used, consumers have no reason to switch as the cost of switching does not outweigh the benefits of it, therefore you have an unnecessary product that you have to pump a shit load of advertising on, which creates more costs…

The advantage of being a startup is precisely that your mission need not cohere with the investments of a large corporation. You can do what you like. From MS's perspective (again: I work here, but my opinions my own blah blah) the problem is this. People use computers to access the Internet. MS can't just be the OS and the browser used to access the Internet to maintain its lofty position as a field leader -- if MS'…

That's an amazing insight, thanks, i hope potential entrepreneurs take note of this and realize the problems corporations face with innovation. It also makes sense as to why corporations are so quick to acquire a startup but also why most times the acquisition is not successful.

Re: We Need Viable Search Engine Competition

#107

Post by antics » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 10:12 PM UTC

naner wrote: post #105

antics wrote: post #87

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…

What about targeted search engines? Google has gotten progressively worse for technical searches as it has been improving generalized "what you mean" searches for everybody else.

Personally? I think there's lots of room for innovating search. Probably not in that area, but in a lot of other areas. Consider, for example, that the majority of the world will has an Internet connection only via phone. Mobile search is an entirely different beast. It is not clear Google's solution is the best here, and because the pattern of using Google on mobile is shaky enough that it could be supplanted with a convincingly better solution. That's to say nothing of the fact that Google's success in developing countries is actually not at all a given.

Re: We Need Viable Search Engine Competition

#108

Post by thedawn » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 10:21 PM UTC

You are so right. I agree with every word. Competition is very important and a real helper to the us the users.

Re: We Need Viable Search Engine Competition

#109

Post by teddyh » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 10:24 PM UTC

romanovcode wrote: post #69

teddyh wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So instead of an entrenched monopolist, I’m supposed to choose… Microsoft? That just feels wrong .

It's 2014, times have changed.

I don’t think Microsoft has changed enough to earn my trust or respect. I doubt they could.

Re: We Need Viable Search Engine Competition

#110

Post by _pius » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 10:36 PM UTC

antics wrote: post #96

nemesisj wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what? I really can't get behind the idea that MS is somehow the stirling example of engineering prowess and discipline. This is the organisation who fails their way through every other operating system. One of the poster children for missing the boat on the internet, tablets, operating systems, cloud services, and more. I also reject this idea that Google's got a lock on every smart person ever. That they do…

Hi OP. Your points, as I understand them, are the following. Correct me if I'm wrong. * MS is not a good example of a strong engineering org. Further, it is not a good example because Windows sucks. * Google doesn't employ every smart person ever. * Google can't actually compete. (ed note: in any field, or just against iOS and Fb?) * My argument is like the argument that no one would supplant Windows. * Given enough…

For starters, we built the entire Bing stack from scratch. No OSS. No common platforms like the JVM. Nothing like that. We started from nothing, and invented the server infrastructure, the data pipeline, the runtime that would support the site, the ML tools, everything.

Wasn't much of the Bing stack built off Powerset, whose core technology was licensed from Xerox PARC?

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/microsofts-bing-powersets-role...