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For Google you could separate the search index from the rest of the company, start regulating it as a public utility and force them to open up its APIs to start
by crdoconnor 9y ago
For Google you could separate the search index from the rest of the company, start regulating it as a public utility and force them to open up its APIs to startups.
At this point it's a little hard to argue that a plucky young startup can come along and build a competing index at the same scale. The amount of power alone needed to maintain it is staggering.
- godelmachine 9y agoRegulating would only diminish its QoS, methinks. Algorithms improve at such fast scale that no one person has complete knowledge about it. Regulating it may drive the regulators mad.
- crdoconnor 9y agoAre you arguing that setting up QoS metrics for a search engine index is intrinsically hard in the way that monitoring the safe running of a nuclear power plant or an air traffic control system is not? I think maintaining a search index is intrinsically hard - much like maintaining a nuclear power plant. I don't think monitoring a search index is though. I'm also skeptical of the notion that the engineering of the search index has changed fundamentally in the last 5 years. Realistically Google is not under much competitive pressure any more.