This is why we shouldn’t over regulate tech. Market forces are strong in search.
Two upstart search engines are teaming up to take on Google
181–190 of 299 posts
Re: Two upstart search engines are teaming up to take on Google
#182This is why we shouldn’t over regulate tech. Market forces are strong in search.
It says right on the subtitle (emphasis mine):
> Generative AI and new rules targeting tech giants are giving Ecosia and Qwant fuel to challenge Google and Microsoft and develop a web index for Europe.
“New rules” means regulation. “Market forces” kept the incumbents at the top, it is regulation that is giving others a chance.
Re: Two upstart search engines are teaming up to take on Google
#183This is why we shouldn’t over regulate tech. Market forces are strong in search.
It says right on the subtitle (emphasis mine): > Generative AI and new rules targeting tech giants are giving Ecosia and Qwant fuel to challenge Google and Microsoft and develop a web index for Europe. “New rules” means regulation. “Market forces” kept the incumbents at the top, it is regulation that is giving others a chance.
What are the rules?
Re: Two upstart search engines are teaming up to take on Google
#184It shouldn't be too hard to achieve what Google were good at before. Their recent search results for me (last 6-12 months) have been so far removed from what I'm searching it felt like a meme. Even after rephrasing things, more details, special quotations etc that everyone knows as the 'search tricks' the results are terrible.
I moved to DDG a couple of years ago, and initially, I found myself often using the `!g` switch, but I honestly can't recall the last time I needed to do that. Only when I'm shopping do I find the goog to be a slightly better tool for finding products sold by niche suppliers. I honestly think google's monopoly on search at this time is 100% powered by momentum, there is almost no other reason to use it over something…
I’ve been on ddg for years too, but I’d say their results quality has dropped as well. I haven’t really been happy with either recently.
Re: Two upstart search engines are teaming up to take on Google
#185Since ChatGPT added web search augmentation my usage of Google has dropped probably 90%. There are still those times where I hit Google -- usually involving "real world" things like finding a restaurant website and similar type things -- but for a shocking number of my normal run-to-google moments now I use ChatGPT.
NFL scores (live!) and random stats like point differentials or F1 driver / event queries. Of course the dozens of coding questions a day in this era where we all jump languages so frequently we have to keep looking up how to do basic stuff. Cooking instructions, and things like "can I substitute butter for lard". Product documentation stuff like "how can I assign a wheel on my Alesis QX61 to the pan in Logic Pro, and record it live to a track" or "how can I disable a malfunctioning pitch wheel on that controller". Historical and science queries. Language queries.
It has completely changed my usage, very much for the better. Web search provided RAG has been a game changer.
And while Google is outrageously fast, getting results on the screen quickly isn't the end. Then I'm digging through shitty bloated webpages or looking through a hundred Reddit comments filled with misinformation.
Re: Two upstart search engines are teaming up to take on Google
#186Every new search engine I've seen was a Bing wrapper with sometimes light reranking. I understand that competing with Google was borderline impossible a decade ago. But in 2024, we have cheap compute, great OSS distributed DBs, powerful new vector search tech. Amateur search engines like Marginalia even run on consumer hardware. CommonCrawl text-only is ~100TB, and can fit on my home server. Why is no company buildin…
Brave Search ONLY uses their own index and the results are really good! I highly recommend it.
Brave image search is not that good though.
Re: Two upstart search engines are teaming up to take on Google
#187Shoutout for Mojeek. Highlights: - Has its own index - Had a pro-privacy privacy policy well before DDG existed - No conflated marketing (DDG wrt it passing on 3 octets of an IP to Bing for local searches, Ecosia for not including Bing's carbon footprint as a meta search engine) - Has an API It's a smaller index and has more limited resources, but pretty much the best genuine alternative, and great for finding older…
Great. Now go monetize it.
I'm an API customer.
Re: Two upstart search engines are teaming up to take on Google
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is not directly related except by the fact that the dynamic is the same and that it is a repeat of the previous attempt. There are 2 clear things that is so common in Europe: Politics injecting a shit load of public money thinking that if you give the money you will be able to reproduce American company success and co. In the end, the money is wasted for their own interest by big groups, intermediaries, and opport…
> Politics injecting a shit load of public money thinking that if you give the money you will be able to reproduce American company success The problem with public funding is not the what but the to whom ? It works fine if you put the right person in charge. However, there are very few signals to prevent the wrong person being put in charge, as it removes most considerations / incentivizes private industry uses. Whic…
It's not just that there are few signals to prevent the wrong person being put in charge, but this kind of government bureaucratic actively selects for the wrong person. These kinds of government IT projects are often soul sucking to work on, and so they attract a specific kind of applicant.
Re: Two upstart search engines are teaming up to take on Google
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it somehow related to the Quaero search engine project that burnt 400 million € of taxpayer money in the early 2000s? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaero https://www.heise.de/news/400-Millionen-Euro-fuer-europaeisc...
It is not directly related except by the fact that the dynamic is the same and that it is a repeat of the previous attempt. There are 2 clear things that is so common in Europe: Politics injecting a shit load of public money thinking that if you give the money you will be able to reproduce American company success and co. In the end, the money is wasted for their own interest by big groups, intermediaries, and opport…
Tbf, it's not like this approach can't work at all. Airbus was born out of a similar dynamic, and it's giving Boeing a run for its money now. Afaik France has a couple of other giants in technology-heavy industries such as shipping or mining, but I couldn't speak to their success. What seems clear by now, though, is that the approach isn't suitable for "tech" (in the typical SV sense of the word), especially consumer-centric.
Re: Two upstart search engines are teaming up to take on Google
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is not directly related except by the fact that the dynamic is the same and that it is a repeat of the previous attempt. There are 2 clear things that is so common in Europe: Politics injecting a shit load of public money thinking that if you give the money you will be able to reproduce American company success and co. In the end, the money is wasted for their own interest by big groups, intermediaries, and opport…
>- and it fails the same in a loop Because that's the desired feature, not a bug. The system works just as intended. None of the people at the helm actually believe they can create competitors to US giants, the scope is to funnel public tax money into the right politically connected private industry pockets. It's just wealth redistribution with a veneer of "sovereignty", similar to large infrastructure projects, exce…
And usually at the end of a public infrastructure project you have something of some benefit to the public, even if there's bad RoI. With tech stuff that goes nowhere at best you have a jobs programme and short-term PR for some politicians.
The fervent wish to only let deserving people get grants results in a huge amount of box-ticking and self-promotion that (in my experience) seems to select for self-promotion parasites rather than people who want to make useful products and get rich from customers rather than government funds.