6 ms·

Not to age myself I remember how cool Google was in 1999. The joy of actually finding what you wanted and not getting sucked into some ad sponsored portal. Now

Not to age myself I remember how cool Google was in 1999. The joy of actually finding what you wanted and not getting sucked into some ad sponsored portal. Now Google is the portal. I’m done with it.

fermienrico 8y ago
Google has invested billions into search and it is nearly impossible for a small startup to invade the search business. For example, imagine a company that allows you to search the internet without ads but charging say $2.99/month fee to use it. Even if I am willing to pay, the search accuracy and ability for a small company to compete with google is nearly impossible. So here we are. Perhaps I’ll switch to DuckDuckGo. They recently got funding and I feel like they’re “cool” right now until if they grow huge and we are back to square one. This is the endless corporate loop we are stuck with.
- colordrops 8y ago
  The endless corporate loop is natural. Everything in this universe is on an endless loop and nothing lasts forever. Just get used to change and use whatever is legit at the moment.
  - millstone 8y ago
    Don't endless loops last forever by definition?
    - sjwright 8y ago
      I think it's more fair to say that endless loops would last forever given the chance but can be (and inevitably are) aborted by external forces. That's true of any endless loop or endless cycle—they could all be aborted by a sufficiently large asteroid.
- snaky 8y ago
  Microsoft has invested billions into Internet Explorer and it is nearly impossible for a small startup to invade the browser business. IE Firefox 2009 Q4 66.42% 21.13% 2003 Q2 94.43% 2.22% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#TheCounter.com_%282000_to_2009%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Th...
  - saurik 8y ago
    Remember that we, the people, sued Microsoft and forced a settlement -- a scenario which also led to the CEO of Microsoft stepping down.
  - olliej 8y ago
    Firefox and Mozilla were not a small startup - they had (comparatively) boatloads of money (now they have even more) and a huge number of free developers :)
    - snaky 8y ago
      > and a huge number of free developers Why do you think the search engine is unable to build a model leveraging a huge number of free developers?
      - greglindahl 8y ago
        Well, for one thing, search is a tightly-coupled problem that revolves around a big and expensive data store. That's quite different from a browser. Blekko did get volunteers to help edit our slashtags, and duckduckgo used to have volunteers help out with their duckduckhacks.
        snaky 8y ago
        I think the main point is to not try to copy Google. DDG is power users' search engine for now, and that's OK. You may leverage power users help in tags, and other features, that would minimize the overhead in hardware platform. To make an extreme example - imagine how many data about the particular user would you need to have and how many resources would you need to spend on AI models training to give the same result by guessing and AI that user would get from SQLite, having formulated simple request in SQL.
- alasdair_ 8y ago
  >So here we are. Perhaps I’ll switch to DuckDuckGo. They recently got funding and I feel like they’re “cool” right now until if they grow huge and we are back to square one. DuckDuckGo's primary selling point is privacy. If they infringe on that, they die. Also, I just switched to an iPhone again after years of using Android, for similar reasons. Apple is scary but right now I want to distance myself from Google as much as possible.
  - fermienrico 8y ago
    If their selling point is privacy, it conflicts with target advertisement business model. I’m curious how they plan to be profitable? Perhaps just good ol’ non targeted advertisement without user profiling?
  - colordrops 8y ago
    Google's primary selling point was being the anti-microsoft, i.e. Don't Be Evil.
    - philliphaydon 8y ago
      And now the tables have turned.
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  > For example, imagine a company that allows you to search the internet without ads but charging say $2.99/month fee to use it. Even if I am willing to pay, the search accuracy and ability for a small company to compete with google is nearly impossible. It doesn't even require payment. Even if you don't do any user targeting at all, insurance companies will transport a Scrooge McDuck money bin full of gold bullion to your location if you can show their car insurance ads to all the people who search for "car insurance" etc. Google itself operated this way for many years. What you need is some competitive advantage over the incumbent. I suspect a good way to do this is to make products for more technical users. Support powerful filters and scripting and regular expressions. Expose the internals of how it works to the user. Publish the source code and let people improve it -- do for search what Red Hat does for operating systems. It's a great model here because the cost of doing the indexing is still a moat even if the search code itself is completely open. Big companies concentrate on the mass market. They've gone so far in the direction of making things so simple and generic that literally everyone can use it that they're leaving open an opportunity for someone to capture the subset of the market willing to suffer the complexity that comes from a more powerful interface. You don't need 99% of the users, 5% is quite sufficient. If you make that you're worth a billion dollars and have the resources to make further improvements that allow you to compete in the wider market.

fermienrico 8y ago

Google has invested billions into search and it is nearly impossible for a small startup to invade the search business. For example, imagine a company that allows you to search the internet without ads but charging say $2.99/month fee to use it. Even if I am willing to pay, the search accuracy and ability for a small company to compete with google is nearly impossible. So here we are. Perhaps I’ll switch to DuckDuckGo. They recently got funding and I feel like they’re “cool” right now until if they grow huge and we are back to square one. This is the endless corporate loop we are stuck with.

colordrops 8y ago
The endless corporate loop is natural. Everything in this universe is on an endless loop and nothing lasts forever. Just get used to change and use whatever is legit at the moment.
- millstone 8y ago
  Don't endless loops last forever by definition?
  - sjwright 8y ago
    I think it's more fair to say that endless loops would last forever given the chance but can be (and inevitably are) aborted by external forces. That's true of any endless loop or endless cycle—they could all be aborted by a sufficiently large asteroid.
snaky 8y ago
Microsoft has invested billions into Internet Explorer and it is nearly impossible for a small startup to invade the browser business. IE Firefox 2009 Q4 66.42% 21.13% 2003 Q2 94.43% 2.22% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#TheCounter.com_%282000_to_2009%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Th...
- saurik 8y ago
  Remember that we, the people, sued Microsoft and forced a settlement -- a scenario which also led to the CEO of Microsoft stepping down.
- olliej 8y ago
  Firefox and Mozilla were not a small startup - they had (comparatively) boatloads of money (now they have even more) and a huge number of free developers :)
  - snaky 8y ago
    > and a huge number of free developers Why do you think the search engine is unable to build a model leveraging a huge number of free developers?
    - greglindahl 8y ago
      Well, for one thing, search is a tightly-coupled problem that revolves around a big and expensive data store. That's quite different from a browser. Blekko did get volunteers to help edit our slashtags, and duckduckgo used to have volunteers help out with their duckduckhacks.
      - snaky 8y ago
        I think the main point is to not try to copy Google. DDG is power users' search engine for now, and that's OK. You may leverage power users help in tags, and other features, that would minimize the overhead in hardware platform. To make an extreme example - imagine how many data about the particular user would you need to have and how many resources would you need to spend on AI models training to give the same result by guessing and AI that user would get from SQLite, having formulated simple request in SQL.
alasdair_ 8y ago
>So here we are. Perhaps I’ll switch to DuckDuckGo. They recently got funding and I feel like they’re “cool” right now until if they grow huge and we are back to square one. DuckDuckGo's primary selling point is privacy. If they infringe on that, they die. Also, I just switched to an iPhone again after years of using Android, for similar reasons. Apple is scary but right now I want to distance myself from Google as much as possible.
- fermienrico 8y ago
  If their selling point is privacy, it conflicts with target advertisement business model. I’m curious how they plan to be profitable? Perhaps just good ol’ non targeted advertisement without user profiling?
- colordrops 8y ago
  Google's primary selling point was being the anti-microsoft, i.e. Don't Be Evil.
  - philliphaydon 8y ago
    And now the tables have turned.
AnthonyMouse 8y ago
> For example, imagine a company that allows you to search the internet without ads but charging say $2.99/month fee to use it. Even if I am willing to pay, the search accuracy and ability for a small company to compete with google is nearly impossible. It doesn't even require payment. Even if you don't do any user targeting at all, insurance companies will transport a Scrooge McDuck money bin full of gold bullion to your location if you can show their car insurance ads to all the people who search for "car insurance" etc. Google itself operated this way for many years. What you need is some competitive advantage over the incumbent. I suspect a good way to do this is to make products for more technical users. Support powerful filters and scripting and regular expressions. Expose the internals of how it works to the user. Publish the source code and let people improve it -- do for search what Red Hat does for operating systems. It's a great model here because the cost of doing the indexing is still a moat even if the search code itself is completely open. Big companies concentrate on the mass market. They've gone so far in the direction of making things so simple and generic that literally everyone can use it that they're leaving open an opportunity for someone to capture the subset of the market willing to suffer the complexity that comes from a more powerful interface. You don't need 99% of the users, 5% is quite sufficient. If you make that you're worth a billion dollars and have the resources to make further improvements that allow you to compete in the wider market.