We Need Viable Search Engine Competition • Hacker News Board

Re: We Need Viable Search Engine Competition

#111

Post by greenyoda » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 10:40 PM UTC

drewvolpe wrote: post #47

This is one of PG's frighteningly ambitious problems and I believe it's an important (and really hard) problem. I think the answer is to focus on an important niche and grow from there. DDG has done a good job by focusing on privacy; they're currently at nearly 4m queries per day. I'm starting by building the search engine I want to use while writing code, which does parallel searches of different parts of the web dy…

Thanks, your prototype looks interesting; I'll try it out. The one-click redirection to DuckDuckGo, Python, etc. is very convenient.

It would be nice if you could add a privacy policy to your "about" page that disclosed what kind of data you collect about your users' queries.

Re: We Need Viable Search Engine Competition

#112

Post by sophacles » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 10:45 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…

Not the OP - but I think you miss the relevance of point 5. Tech is littered with the irrelevant remnants and skeletons of "giant unstoppable forces". Look at Sun - in the 90s they were unbeatable, by 2004 they were quickly growing irrelevant. Oracle seems to be on the way out. Cisco too - they haven't done much exciting in a while, in a lot of circles they are viewed as the company holding networking back.

Other companies no one could unseat:

* DEC

* Xerox

* Apple (a couple of times)

* Corel

* Lotus

* IBM (a couple times in a couple fields)

* And on and on.

The point is that given a bit of time, Google will mess up, someone will come up with some new tech, and/or google will implode under it's own crushing weight.

Re: We Need Viable Search Engine Competition

#113

Post by yodha77 » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 10:49 PM UTC

as lot of people have said.. u cannot beat google at search. but, there is a way.. push information that users are looking for before they even think about it (similar to Google NOW). search is still a sophisticated operation for regular users. by showing the right information at the right time, users don't even have to search.

Re: We Need Viable Search Engine Competition

#114

Post by antics » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 10:57 PM UTC

sophacles wrote: post #112

antics wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not the OP - but I think you miss the relevance of point 5. Tech is littered with the irrelevant remnants and skeletons of "giant unstoppable forces". Look at Sun - in the 90s they were unbeatable, by 2004 they were quickly growing irrelevant. Oracle seems to be on the way out. Cisco too - they haven't done much exciting in a while, in a lot of circles they are viewed as the company holding networking back. Other com…

I'm responding to the fact that OP claims MS is not a good engineering firm. I don't think that point is arguable. We are not just good, we are among the very best in the world in terms of engineering achievements.

Of course, whether we survive is another question entirely! I did not speculate on this, nor would I. Who knows what the future holds, we've just this year basically bet the company on some fairly risky things.

That said, I'm all for hating on large corporations, but the idea that Cisco and Oracle -- literally the market leaders in their respective domains -- are "on their way out" because they don't innovate fast enough is not a very convincing argument. :( Precisely who poses them an existential threat at this point? I see no one at all.

Re: We Need Viable Search Engine Competition

#115

Post by devcpp » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 11:02 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…

You make some good points but you lost me there:

>Windows is one of the great engineering feats of CS

Do I have to point out all the lame exploits and bugs which take so long to get fixed, the terrible design, the "things which should have been there years ago but we still don't have" like a decent file manager, task manager, copy utility? And AFAIK Windows made few major contribution to the theory of OSs (semaphores, threads, paging, scheduling and so on) so there's really nothing to be amazed at.

I'll spare you my opinions on Bing. Reinventing the wheel is not worth describing, no matter how beautiful that wheel is, although I'm happy for you to be a part of the team making that wheel. If only Bing had more ambition than just being a clone of Google Search, some people under 70 would actually consider migrating. But if you're happy with your default-search-engine-bundled-with-IE market share at 20%, good for you (eh, it does bring a lot of ad money). You may not call the shots at MS, but you can at least admit all the shortcomings.

Re: We Need Viable Search Engine Competition

#116

Post by gesman » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 11:08 PM UTC

lubujackson wrote: post #98

gesman wrote: post #67

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…

That's exactly what my startup is trying to address - how do you help users navigate 100, 1000 or even a million search engines? Ultimately, you need a way to browse search engines by topic and bundle them into custom lists for your specific needs. It's early going, but check Nuggety out if you're interested: http://nuggety.com/

There is no need to navigate million of search engines. There aren't too many to speak of.

Aggregating services are successful only where there are millions of equal service providers (like hotels or restaurants) and the one needs a one-stop place (aggregator) to search.

When Google (and Bing and others are far secondary) aggregator model couldn't really do much.

Re: We Need Viable Search Engine Competition

#117

Post by tptacek » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 11:09 PM UTC

devcpp wrote: post #115

antics wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You make some good points but you lost me there: >Windows is one of the great engineering feats of CS Do I have to point out all the lame exploits and bugs which take so long to get fixed, the terrible design, the "things which should have been there years ago but we still don't have" like a decent file manager, task manager, copy utility? And AFAIK Windows made few major contribution to the theory of OSs (semaphores…

You could point out all the lame exploits and bugs, but only if you want to spark a long argument that you will end up losing. There are a variety of things I don't like about Windows, and I avoid using it. But the idea that it's somehow less secure than other operating systems is for the most part a Linux advocacy myth. The fundamental security architecture of WinAPI is just not that different from that of Linux or OS X (which also has a legacy compat issue that complicates its security).

Re: We Need Viable Search Engine Competition

#118

Post by AJ007 » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 11:11 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #89

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…

This. When you do build a competitive search engine and you see how much money Microsoft has put behind theirs to essentially no avail (how many times have angry shareholders tried to get them to kill it off?) you start to realize a key fact. 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. I…

Both Yahoo & Microsoft did a really bad job for a really long time at simply providing a platform that is comfortable for advertisers to use.

I have run ad campaigns on Adwords continuously for 7+ years. Throughout that time I have run ad campaigns on Yahoo, now Microsoft Adcenter, on and off. The last I checked their ad platform was about where Adwords was in 2005.

Yahoo had some very reprehensible things on their platform. I had to shut off all of my campaigns because someone at their company was changing what my ads said without my permission. Besides being a legal issue for Yahoo at the time, it put me in a position of unlimited liability. Fortunately, I never witnessed that behavior after Microsoft took over. Yet, Microsoft's platform was just too difficult to get working.

That was probably $5 million + in missed advertising revenue from me, just a tiny advertiser. I can only imagine the billions of dollars of revenue Microsoft and Yahoo lost for failing to take seriously the search advertising marketplace.

Re: We Need Viable Search Engine Competition

#119

Post by devcpp » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 11:15 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #117

devcpp wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make some good points but you lost me there: >Windows is one of the great engineering feats of CS Do I have to point out all the lame exploits and bugs which take so long to get fixed, the terrible design, the "things which should have been there years ago but we still don't have" like a decent file manager, task manager, copy utility? And AFAIK Windows made few major contribution to the theory of OSs (semaphores…

You could point out all the lame exploits and bugs, but only if you want to spark a long argument that you will end up losing. There are a variety of things I don't like about Windows, and I avoid using it. But the idea that it's somehow less secure than other operating systems is for the most part a Linux advocacy myth. The fundamental security architecture of WinAPI is just not that different from that of Linux or…

Fair enough, you know much more than me in that domain. :)

Are you going to argue about the famous general instability of Windows compared to its large competitors though? It seems like a good indicator of bad design in low level implementations.

Re: We Need Viable Search Engine Competition

#120

Post by AJ007 » Sat, Jan 04, 2014, 11:15 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…

Is not the whole story of technology doing more with fewer humans?

Google could simply stay ahead of the curve, but this assumes all of that human capital is being dedicated specifically to building the most effective search engine.

What I see now is an advertising search engine. The friends who don't believe me are the ones who haven't turned Adblock Plus off in the past 3 years.