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To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

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Re: To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

#41

Post by judge2020 »

arch-ninja wrote: post #23

No sure if relevant but I've hated google's search for a unique reason: I find it horribly slow, especially compared to what it used to be. It's so slow, I've designed + partially implemented an alternative for my own use: https://github.com/Jeffrey-P-McAteer/dindex I've only tested with 1000 records, but the query times are all <200ms.

Maybe it's your part of the world, but my TTFB to google search pages is less than 150ms and the "generated in x seconds" is usually less than 1 second. That's pretty good for an index searching effectively every public internet page.

Re: To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

#42

Post by playpause »

pointillistic wrote: post #2

If DuckDuckGo can change their stupid name they will gain market share overnight.

I agree. I've given up recommending DuckDuckGo to non-technical friends/family because they always get distracted by the irritating name. I wish they would change it to "Duck.com".

Re: To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

#44

Post by rpiguy »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #29
rpiguy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is actually very easy to do legislatively (laws tell the companies what to do, not necessarily how to do it). The technical challenges fall on Google.

> It is actually very easy to do legislatively It would be easy to write a law, not to pass one. Generally speaking, when a law is unpredictably disruptive it becomes (a) difficult to pass and (b) time-consuming and costly to defend in court.

The difference in this case is that the usual defenders of private property rights and libertarianism feel as though Google is suppressing them, potentially removing the usual roadblock to this kind reform.

This is a rare instance where anti-corporate leftists and dejected right wingers could actually do something substantive together.

In most cases I would agree with you the defenders of private industry are pretty fierce in the US, but all that ideology sort of dissipates when you feel like you are being oppressed (whether or not, or to what degree it is true).

Re: To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

#46

Post by sametmax »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #14
peteretep wrote: post #3

I don’t want to break Google’s monopoly on search. Google’s search is fantastic. It’s their advertising business knowing too much about me I care about.

> Google’s search is fantastic The author's proposal, making Google's index publicly accessible, would leave Google search intact. Google's algorithm would presumably remain proprietary. For people who like Google today, nothing would change. For people for whom Google falls short, there would be new options. Looks like a clear win-win for consumers.

Like you said, the value of Google is the algo. The index is worth little.

The limits of Bing, Qwant, DDG, etc. are not the number of the indexed pages.

It's that, give them the same pages, and the same search terms, and they don't return results as good.

Re: To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

#47

Post by JumpCrisscross »

glitchc wrote: post #39
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This idea is a pipe dream. It would be nationalizing property The author references precedent in the 1956 consent decree with Bell Labs [1]. If anything, that was more extreme. AT&T developed those patents. The author's proposal doesn't involve Google surrendering its algorithm. Just the index it compiled from public resources using a publicly-subsidized Internet infrastructure. All without content owners' permissi…

What about the computing and infrastructure resources that Google dedicated to build the index, and continues to dedicate to keep the index up to date? This is a failed model. There is no incentive for Google to continue to update the public version, and it would quickly fall out of date while Google focuses on their own internal copy. It’s a solution suggested by lawmakers who fundamentally don’t understand how comp…

> What about the computing and infrastructure resources that Google dedicated to build the index

How is this different from the 1956 consent decree? AT&T spent money developing its patents. But on the basis of longstanding law around public interest, it was forced to license them to third parties. (Note: not give them away.)

> and continues to dedicate to keep the index up to date?

The author explicitly contemplates, again within the context of the 1956 consent decree and many subsequent and preceding actions by the U.S. government (mostly around pipelines, et cetera), use fees paid to Google.

> There is no incentive for Google to continue to update the public version, and it would quickly fall out of date while Google focuses on their own internal copy

Google wouldn't be permitted to maintain dual states. Its algorithms would have to use the public index.

Re: To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

#48

Post by ksahin »

"DuckDuckGo, which aggregates information obtained from 400 other non-Google sources, including its own modest crawler.)"

I looked into it, and it seems DDG is using Bing and Yahoo search API and lots of other sources. I looked into the pricing of Yahoo's search API / Bing search API,it ranges from $0.80 / 1000 queries to several dollars per thousand queries.

It seems to expensive to be economically viable with ads, what am I missing ?

Re: To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

#49

Post by fouc »

peteretep wrote: post #3

I don’t want to break Google’s monopoly on search. Google’s search is fantastic. It’s their advertising business knowing too much about me I care about.

I think the better move is to find a way to kill the advertising business model that google relies on. If there's no advertising there's not as much need for all this data collection.

Re: To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

#50

Post by JumpCrisscross »

sametmax wrote: post #46
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google’s search is fantastic The author's proposal, making Google's index publicly accessible, would leave Google search intact. Google's algorithm would presumably remain proprietary. For people who like Google today, nothing would change. For people for whom Google falls short, there would be new options. Looks like a clear win-win for consumers.

Like you said, the value of Google is the algo. The index is worth little. The limits of Bing, Qwant, DDG, etc. are not the number of the indexed pages. It's that, give them the same pages, and the same search terms, and they don't return results as good.

> the value of Google is the algo. The index is worth little.

But it's worth something. Giving DuckDuckGo direct access to Google's index, including the ability to train models on said index, would improve the competitive landscape.

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