Are there any promising search algorithms/crawlers out there? Obviously one of Google's advantage is the size of their index, but I would like (and probably pay) for a search engine that was as good as Google used to be, but only indexed a small portion of the internet that interests me. Maybe a business model of accepting payment to index certain domains could work.
Who is going to replace Google for us?
201–210 of 229 posts
Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would make Mastodon more appealing for you or the hypothetical user for whom you think it's not that great? The main thing that comes to mind for me would be more people I know in person using it.
Many moons ago, someone on Reddit said "Facebook requires registration in order to view content, which tells you all you need to know." I never forgot that remark. So that's a thing that I'd recommend to Mastadon: make it viewable by anyone, even if they don't have an account. Nothing smells quite like "you are the product" than requiring an account.
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Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would make Mastodon more appealing for you or the hypothetical user for whom you think it's not that great? The main thing that comes to mind for me would be more people I know in person using it.
Nothing really. The core concept is let's say "wrong" (for my personal case). Mastodon is a stream of very short posts. Problem a - shortness, means no longform texts there, so they are posted in different sites, externally. Short posts aren't very informative usually. Problem b - stream. Currently almost all of the social media are structured like this and it is a bad format. It is not engaging, it is not possible t…
A also bothers me. It isn't hard for an instance admin to change the character limit, and does seem like a way instances could stand out from each other, yet it's rarely done. Federated instances do seem to handle long posts gracefully (there's a "read more" expando link).
B seems inherent to social media as we know it. What would be a better design for you?
C is handled in part by relay servers synchronizing content between instances. Small instances often aren't well-connected though and I think both instance admins and relay operators could do better here.
Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?
#204Are there any promising search algorithms/crawlers out there? Obviously one of Google's advantage is the size of their index, but I would like (and probably pay) for a search engine that was as good as Google used to be, but only indexed a small portion of the internet that interests me. Maybe a business model of accepting payment to index certain domains could work.
https://kagi.com
Feel free to thank me later.
Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
I unironically do that. Maybe I should publish? We could make a small project that just has interesting websites and reviews? Yelp for the interesting web?
And you could call it something quirky, like Yippee!
Or Yahoo
...
No, wait, some squatter sits on it.
Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bing, Yandex and DDG just don't achieve the same level of relevancy for me. Their indexes are missing many good results that Google gives out straightaway
Still not sure what I’m missing though since I find everything I’m looking for with those engines. Marginally better results (an opinion) doesn’t seem like “light years” better to me.
Maybe it is the way I search, but, as I've said, many websites are missing from their indexes. Yandex, the second best out of these, is also pretty bad at decoding the context of a search, seems like plain text search
Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?
#207The most concrete complaints in this piece appear to be: - Google News includes stories from a source that the author doesn't want anyone else to be able to see. (If they just didn't want to see those stories themselves, then there's an easily accessible "hide sources from XXX" entry in the context menu). - Generic complaints about shopping searches returning links to Amazon, or pages having referral links to Amazon.…
> Seems basically untrue; Gmail has incredibly few ads, Drive I think none, and data from neither is used for ad targeting.
Huh? Looking in my gmail inbox, I see virtually nothing but ads.
Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Epoch Times isn’t just a “source” that some people don’t want to see. And gmail etc has a shit ton of ads. This comment isn’t a reasonable critique of the article it’s denialism at best
> And gmail etc has a shit ton of ads Where? There are, sometimes, 1-2 ads in the "Promotions" tab, which i really wouldn't call "a shit ton". Breitbart and Epoch Times shouldn't come up anywhere close to anything with "News" in the name.
Dunno about you, but easily half the emails I get are advertisements.
Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?
#209Do people miss the Google of old, or the Web of old? The Web used to be very information dense. It was built from the ground up by specialists and enthusiasts, educational and governmental institutions, and groups of like-minded individuals. Then it became commercialized and commodified. Entire industries popped up to shovel mass-produced crap to masses of people through Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc. Forums became s…
It was a bit before my time, but peak usenet and mailing lists of the era looked awesome. The breadth and depth of the people who would participate in discussions (specifically in my field, e.g., comp.arch and the like) was quite amazing. Luminaries in the fields of computer CPUs, networking, programming, operating systems, etc. From academics to professionals to students and hobbyists. That still goes on, but the go…
I don't think it's just nostalgia. The barrier to entry for the early internet was much higher on a financial front and on a knowledge front. You had to really be a techie to get deeply involved in the internet in the early days.
Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
This way of looking at things assumes that wealth is a finite resource, and that by some people having a lot it is depriving others. Wealth doesn't work like that, though. It's not a zero sum game. Wealth is infinite, and can be created from nothing by providing a good or service that people need. I had a friend who was a multimillionaire, got there by building stone walls. Another friend who's an immigrant, worth ov…
> I had a friend who was a multimillionaire, got there by building stone walls. Your friend did not make that much money building stone walls. Your friend made that money acting as a middleman hiring teams of low paid workers (likely undocumented migrants) to build the stone walls while he received a handsome cut for little effort. > Another friend who's an immigrant, worth over ten million, got there by making custo…
You certainly are full of assumptions about people you have never met and have no information about.
> Not sure why you mention them being an immigrant
Illustrating the American Dream. They started from nothing, worked hard, and made it big.
There's a reason why people from around the world are flocking to this country.
With hard work, good ideas, and grit it's possible to achieve anything.
Anyone has the ability to change their stars in this country. I've seen tons of examples. I've listed just a few.
Instead of being inspired by these examples, you lash out, angrily. Accuse some very decent people of treating their employees badly (which is completely untrue, by the way).
You accuse strangers, who are friends of mine, of all sorts of abuse, with zero knowledge.
What sort of anger and disillusionment drives that?
I hope you can overcome it.
By the way, some of those folks I mentioned made millionaires of some of their employees too.
Slightly more than peanuts.