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20 years ago, all the engines (AltaVista, Lycos) did exactly that. And then they all became "portal" like. And then a brand new engine with just a search box (s

20 years ago, all the engines (AltaVista, Lycos) did exactly that. And then they all became "portal" like. And then a brand new engine with just a search box (so refreshing so clean) came along and swiped them over....

flyingprogram 9y ago
Great startup idea!
- SkyMarshal 9y ago
  Someone already did it! https://duckduckgo.com/ https://duckduckgo.com/
  - atupis 9y ago
    Some weird reason duckduckgo usually gives worse search results than google.
    - iagooar 9y ago
      The reason is Google probably has 100x the money, and 1000x the expertise. I love DuckDuckGo for their no-following and no-tracking you policy. I admire that and want to support them. But yet, I know that many, many of the queries are usually yield far better results on Google. I'm just hoping that with time and enough people using DuckDuckGo, it will get a lot better.
      - SkyMarshal 9y ago
        Possibly more data too. AI + more data = more useful results.
    - Insanity 9y ago
      I have been using DDG for a long time now and have never had that problem. Except with images. So I still use google for that.:-)
    - abritinthebay 9y ago
      Because they don’t track you so can’t make assumptions about what you want/mean. Trade offs.
      - crowbahr 9y ago
        I like what Google gives me in return for consuming my data, personally.
        draugadrotten 9y ago
        Perhaps your children and grand-children will be less thankful. Your data will stay around.
        abritinthebay 9y ago
        Sure. That’s totally a valid position. I think there’s a middle ground though - and Google is far far on one side of it.
    - rawfan 9y ago
      I repeatedly tried "living in another search-engine" for a month at a time. I tried Bing, DDG and Yahoo. If I didn't search for something easy (like "population new york") the results were useless and superficial. Searching for something like "programatically create credit memo magento" yielded the user documentation on how to create a credit memo while Googles first result was the relevant API page with the second being forum posts explaining how to do what I wanted. If you need specific results and don't get them, you go back to Google.
      - Qub3d 9y ago
        I use DDG, but honestly still go to google a lot. The secret is DDG allows "bangs" -- !g in front of a query is a google search. It turns the Chrome omnibox into an even more powerful tool.
        falcolas 9y ago
        Or behind, nice when you ddg search wasn't useful, just append a !g and hit return. DDG is my default, and I'm quite happy with it.
thomyorkie 9y ago
The difference is personalization. I never would visit a portal site like yahoo, but every morning I look through my Google Now feed. Relevance matters.
- pjc50 9y ago
  Does anyone else remember the personalisable "iGoogle"?
  - cyxxon 9y ago
    Yeah, I actually hated when that went away. I had several RSS feeds on there, my inbox, my calendar... never found a good replacement. I used Netvives for a while, but it was somehow not the same (can't really put my finger on it, though).
    - hammock 9y ago
      Can be replaced by Google Now and/or your Android home screen (inbox widget, etc)
      - TeMPOraL 9y ago
        Except Google Now still completely sucks because you have close to zero direct control on what gets shown there. Also: I like that they're experimenting, but come on. Replacing a settings menu with a list of very specific yes/no questions that are added to that list as you encounter them - that's just wrong. You don't even get a benefit of being able to scroll through a settings screen to discover what features are available...
      - pjc50 9y ago
        Not on a desktop PC!
  - SmellyGeekBoy 9y ago
    It was my homepage for the longest time. Such a great service. Sadly now I have to come to HN and hope there's something of interest here when I have 15 minutes to spare.
Flott 9y ago
And now they're going to copy Bing. It's just so weird.
elihu 9y ago
Time for a new search engine maybe? Duckduckgo seems like the obvious alternative search engine these days, but how much of their own indexing do they do? It seems from some casual googling (no, the irony of that is not lost on me) that they mostly rely on Bing or Yahoo as the backend. Some thoughts: Search engines should be a lot easier to build in 2017 than they were two decades ago when Google started out. We don't have to store the index in DRAM to avoid hard drive seek times like they did; we can use SSDs. Having a good quality ranking metric could offset shortcomings in the size of the index. PageRank is okay, but we could do better by punishing sites that link to low-quality content. Speaking of PageRank, the PageRank patent expires in a couple years, I believe. So, constructing ranking algorithms that build on PageRank will soon be an option. It's hard to compete with Google and Bing in terms of hardware resources, but probably the minimum investment to build a useful search engine is probably at lot lower than what we might think. A lot of the basic software infrastructure is probably already written. I don't know what the state-of-the-art in web crawlers is, but in 2017 I doubt that one would have to write one from scratch. Maybe there's a way to build a shared/federated distributed index. Running the project as a non-profit might be the best way to maintain trust of users. Not having any ads at all (like Wikipedia) might be a good way to one-up Google's previous policy of no ads/news on the front page.
- Qub3d 9y ago
  I like DDG, I just hope they have some contingency in place when the Yahoo! engine they're relying on inevitably goes belly up.
  - NTripleOne 9y ago
    Doesn't yahoo use bing anyway nowadays?
  - crispytx 9y ago
    Yeah I'm pretty sure that DuckDuckGo is powered by Yahoo/Bing which really just means, Microsoft is powering DuckDuckGo's search engine for the most part. I'm sure DDG puts their own spin on things as well, but Microsoft is doing all the heavy lifting.
RegW 9y ago
> 20 years ago, all the engines (AltaVista, Lycos) did exactly that. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana
signal11 9y ago
Ironically Google used make a big deal about how their homepage was clean and uncluttered, unlike Yahoo (they especially called out Yahoo's horoscopes).

flyingprogram 9y ago

Great startup idea!

SkyMarshal 9y ago
Someone already did it! https://duckduckgo.com/ https://duckduckgo.com/
- atupis 9y ago
  Some weird reason duckduckgo usually gives worse search results than google.
  - iagooar 9y ago
    The reason is Google probably has 100x the money, and 1000x the expertise. I love DuckDuckGo for their no-following and no-tracking you policy. I admire that and want to support them. But yet, I know that many, many of the queries are usually yield far better results on Google. I'm just hoping that with time and enough people using DuckDuckGo, it will get a lot better.
    - SkyMarshal 9y ago
      Possibly more data too. AI + more data = more useful results.
  - Insanity 9y ago
    I have been using DDG for a long time now and have never had that problem. Except with images. So I still use google for that.:-)
  - abritinthebay 9y ago
    Because they don’t track you so can’t make assumptions about what you want/mean. Trade offs.
    - crowbahr 9y ago
      I like what Google gives me in return for consuming my data, personally.
      - draugadrotten 9y ago
        Perhaps your children and grand-children will be less thankful. Your data will stay around.
      - abritinthebay 9y ago
        Sure. That’s totally a valid position. I think there’s a middle ground though - and Google is far far on one side of it.
  - rawfan 9y ago
    I repeatedly tried "living in another search-engine" for a month at a time. I tried Bing, DDG and Yahoo. If I didn't search for something easy (like "population new york") the results were useless and superficial. Searching for something like "programatically create credit memo magento" yielded the user documentation on how to create a credit memo while Googles first result was the relevant API page with the second being forum posts explaining how to do what I wanted. If you need specific results and don't get them, you go back to Google.
    - Qub3d 9y ago
      I use DDG, but honestly still go to google a lot. The secret is DDG allows "bangs" -- !g in front of a query is a google search. It turns the Chrome omnibox into an even more powerful tool.
      - falcolas 9y ago
        Or behind, nice when you ddg search wasn't useful, just append a !g and hit return. DDG is my default, and I'm quite happy with it.

thomyorkie 9y ago

The difference is personalization. I never would visit a portal site like yahoo, but every morning I look through my Google Now feed. Relevance matters.

pjc50 9y ago
Does anyone else remember the personalisable "iGoogle"?
- cyxxon 9y ago
  Yeah, I actually hated when that went away. I had several RSS feeds on there, my inbox, my calendar... never found a good replacement. I used Netvives for a while, but it was somehow not the same (can't really put my finger on it, though).
  - hammock 9y ago
    Can be replaced by Google Now and/or your Android home screen (inbox widget, etc)
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      Except Google Now still completely sucks because you have close to zero direct control on what gets shown there. Also: I like that they're experimenting, but come on. Replacing a settings menu with a list of very specific yes/no questions that are added to that list as you encounter them - that's just wrong. You don't even get a benefit of being able to scroll through a settings screen to discover what features are available...
    - pjc50 9y ago
      Not on a desktop PC!
- SmellyGeekBoy 9y ago
  It was my homepage for the longest time. Such a great service. Sadly now I have to come to HN and hope there's something of interest here when I have 15 minutes to spare.

Flott 9y ago

And now they're going to copy Bing. It's just so weird.

elihu 9y ago

Time for a new search engine maybe? Duckduckgo seems like the obvious alternative search engine these days, but how much of their own indexing do they do? It seems from some casual googling (no, the irony of that is not lost on me) that they mostly rely on Bing or Yahoo as the backend. Some thoughts: Search engines should be a lot easier to build in 2017 than they were two decades ago when Google started out. We don't have to store the index in DRAM to avoid hard drive seek times like they did; we can use SSDs. Having a good quality ranking metric could offset shortcomings in the size of the index. PageRank is okay, but we could do better by punishing sites that link to low-quality content. Speaking of PageRank, the PageRank patent expires in a couple years, I believe. So, constructing ranking algorithms that build on PageRank will soon be an option. It's hard to compete with Google and Bing in terms of hardware resources, but probably the minimum investment to build a useful search engine is probably at lot lower than what we might think. A lot of the basic software infrastructure is probably already written. I don't know what the state-of-the-art in web crawlers is, but in 2017 I doubt that one would have to write one from scratch. Maybe there's a way to build a shared/federated distributed index. Running the project as a non-profit might be the best way to maintain trust of users. Not having any ads at all (like Wikipedia) might be a good way to one-up Google's previous policy of no ads/news on the front page.

Qub3d 9y ago
I like DDG, I just hope they have some contingency in place when the Yahoo! engine they're relying on inevitably goes belly up.
- NTripleOne 9y ago
  Doesn't yahoo use bing anyway nowadays?
- crispytx 9y ago
  Yeah I'm pretty sure that DuckDuckGo is powered by Yahoo/Bing which really just means, Microsoft is powering DuckDuckGo's search engine for the most part. I'm sure DDG puts their own spin on things as well, but Microsoft is doing all the heavy lifting.

RegW 9y ago

> 20 years ago, all the engines (AltaVista, Lycos) did exactly that. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana

signal11 9y ago

Ironically Google used make a big deal about how their homepage was clean and uncluttered, unlike Yahoo (they especially called out Yahoo's horoscopes).