5 ms·

This is a very, very, very small amount of money if you want to build a search engine, let alone one "to rival Google" (source?). Looks like the goals are reali

This is a very, very, very small amount of money if you want to build a search engine, let alone one "to rival Google" (source?). Looks like the goals are realistic, though - look how wikipedia search could be extended beyond results from wikipedia.org, build some test sets. And get a better idea what it really is that is supposed to be built.

Lanari 11y ago
Google started with less, and so almost every project on the internet.
tuvalie 11y ago
I run a knowledge engine project that actively mines facts from web-based sources and third-party data dumps. It was featured on the front page of HN a while ago, and has a total of $10 in funding (from a single donation; not a typo). I have, however, put a ton of time into it, and it's something I'm very passionate about. I'm fairly confident Wikipedia can have success making initial headway on their grant objectives with $250,000. If anyone's interested, here's a demo of my own project: https://tuvalie.com/fae/?q=Albert%20Einstein https://tuvalie.com/fae/?q=Albert%20Einstein
- metasean 11y ago
  Over 15 years ago, for my undergraduate thesis I set up a "Hypermedia Textbook" on the history of my field. I had to manually collate all the info, manually scan in every photo, and type in every last bit of text and html. The end result was a couple hundred pages that looked very, very similar to what your Einstein page looks like! At the time, I knew a better way would emerge, but didn't know how or when. It's moments like this that I (a) feel old :( and (b) am amazed by the times we live in and the speed at which things are happening! :) Thank you for providing such a wonderful, if unintentional, moment of self-reflection!
  - tuvalie 11y ago
    Thank you for checking it out! And if you have any ideas for how things can be improved, I'd love to hear them :)
- cJ0th 11y ago
  So apparently Einstein has his own, official website (einstein.biz). Who knew? It has got a proper shop and everything! Treat yourself to this relatively expensive USB stick: http://www.shopeinstein.com/mimobot-16gb-usb-flash-drive/details/117610702?feature-name=toys-gadgets&feature=117611424 http://www.shopeinstein.com/mimobot-16gb-usb-flash-drive/det...
quickben 11y ago
I run a search engine that indexes an entire western country for beer-worth of vps. I spent few months to build it though. I don't see scaling for the world to be hard given the money they have.
- noelsusman 11y ago
  Building a basic search engine is relatively easy. Building one that rivals Google is extremely difficult, and not just because they're so big and convincing people to switch is hard. It's much easier to have good results when you know that the websites you're indexing don't care about you at all. Once you get popular enough to rival Google everyone and their mother will be trying to game you and that changes the problem significantly. The original implementation of the Google search engine would get obliterated today, though I guess you have to start somewhere.
  - gmac 11y ago
    There's another incumbent advantage here: I imagine it's much easier to provide good results when you also have data on which results thousands or millions of people clicked on for millions of search terms.
ceejayoz 11y ago
I think "this is a very, very, very small amount of money if you want to build an encyclopedia" was probably said by a bunch of people in the early Wikipedia days.
orionblastar 11y ago
It is a small amount of money and the database for it has to be huge to index a lot of websites. So the server will have a large hard drive and be able to serve up enough users to not suffer outages. I imagine they will build a proof of concept and get more money for it later. Have volunteers work on building it to save money. Open source the project and have others look into fixing the issues with it.
Animats 11y ago
Cuil spent about $30M before they went bust. By the time they went under, due to a total lack of a revenue model, they had a halfway decent search engine that did its own web crawl. So that's a data point on how much it costs.
- GigabyteCoin 11y ago
  If only Cuil came about after the Snowden revelations, they might have been able to make a real name for themselves.
  - Animats 11y ago
    That's been a real boost to DuckDuckGo.
Altay- 11y ago
The basics of search are pretty well established today. Just because it initially cost Google a ton of money doesn't mean it would cost nearly as much today. This holds true for nearly every human endeavor.

Lanari 11y ago

Google started with less, and so almost every project on the internet.

tuvalie 11y ago

I run a knowledge engine project that actively mines facts from web-based sources and third-party data dumps. It was featured on the front page of HN a while ago, and has a total of $10 in funding (from a single donation; not a typo). I have, however, put a ton of time into it, and it's something I'm very passionate about. I'm fairly confident Wikipedia can have success making initial headway on their grant objectives with $250,000. If anyone's interested, here's a demo of my own project: https://tuvalie.com/fae/?q=Albert%20Einstein https://tuvalie.com/fae/?q=Albert%20Einstein

metasean 11y ago
Over 15 years ago, for my undergraduate thesis I set up a "Hypermedia Textbook" on the history of my field. I had to manually collate all the info, manually scan in every photo, and type in every last bit of text and html. The end result was a couple hundred pages that looked very, very similar to what your Einstein page looks like! At the time, I knew a better way would emerge, but didn't know how or when. It's moments like this that I (a) feel old :( and (b) am amazed by the times we live in and the speed at which things are happening! :) Thank you for providing such a wonderful, if unintentional, moment of self-reflection!
- tuvalie 11y ago
  Thank you for checking it out! And if you have any ideas for how things can be improved, I'd love to hear them :)
cJ0th 11y ago
So apparently Einstein has his own, official website (einstein.biz). Who knew? It has got a proper shop and everything! Treat yourself to this relatively expensive USB stick: http://www.shopeinstein.com/mimobot-16gb-usb-flash-drive/details/117610702?feature-name=toys-gadgets&feature=117611424 http://www.shopeinstein.com/mimobot-16gb-usb-flash-drive/det...

quickben 11y ago

I run a search engine that indexes an entire western country for beer-worth of vps. I spent few months to build it though. I don't see scaling for the world to be hard given the money they have.

noelsusman 11y ago
Building a basic search engine is relatively easy. Building one that rivals Google is extremely difficult, and not just because they're so big and convincing people to switch is hard. It's much easier to have good results when you know that the websites you're indexing don't care about you at all. Once you get popular enough to rival Google everyone and their mother will be trying to game you and that changes the problem significantly. The original implementation of the Google search engine would get obliterated today, though I guess you have to start somewhere.
- gmac 11y ago
  There's another incumbent advantage here: I imagine it's much easier to provide good results when you also have data on which results thousands or millions of people clicked on for millions of search terms.

ceejayoz 11y ago

I think "this is a very, very, very small amount of money if you want to build an encyclopedia" was probably said by a bunch of people in the early Wikipedia days.

orionblastar 11y ago

It is a small amount of money and the database for it has to be huge to index a lot of websites. So the server will have a large hard drive and be able to serve up enough users to not suffer outages. I imagine they will build a proof of concept and get more money for it later. Have volunteers work on building it to save money. Open source the project and have others look into fixing the issues with it.

Animats 11y ago

Cuil spent about $30M before they went bust. By the time they went under, due to a total lack of a revenue model, they had a halfway decent search engine that did its own web crawl. So that's a data point on how much it costs.

GigabyteCoin 11y ago
If only Cuil came about after the Snowden revelations, they might have been able to make a real name for themselves.
- Animats 11y ago
  That's been a real boost to DuckDuckGo.

Altay- 11y ago

The basics of search are pretty well established today. Just because it initially cost Google a ton of money doesn't mean it would cost nearly as much today. This holds true for nearly every human endeavor.