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Wow, ambitious! Your sheer nerve is enough to click on the link and check it out. :) As a potential early adopter that has seen countless would-be world-changi

Wow, ambitious! Your sheer nerve is enough to click on the link and check it out. :) As a potential early adopter that has seen countless would-be world-changing technology efforts come and go, in order to personally get me on the bandwagon, it would help to know a few things that didn't stand out to me at first, even after visiting the https://bloom.sh https://bloom.sh website. (1) When I think Google I think "search" first and foremost, and I didn't see a search demo or anything. I think your average visitor is going to be thinking the same. If you're not involved in search, then branding yourself up as a Google alternative seems a bit off. (2) How do you intend to sustain the project? Funding, grants, donations, paid plans, etc. More light on the team behind it as well perhaps, their incentives, skills, etc. I want to know that you have a reasonable chance of existing long enough to grind Google to the ground. :) (3) A past version of myself would like to know more about "What's in it for me, like right now"? Saving the planet is all well and good, but I was a selfish short-term thinker. (4) A future version of myself would like to know (assuming points (2) and (3) are answered to satisfaction) more about what I can do for you, but just in small ways, i.e. I don't/won't have the time to help with an iOS app. Practically speaking, this may just mean placing your donation links or "Subscribe for updates" buttons somewhere more prominent. I know some of this is included in your peer comment here on HN, so speaking about the websites only. Anyway, good on you for releasing, and good luck! I'll be following the project!

z0mbie42 7y ago
Hi, Thank you very much for these encouraging words! (1) You are totally right, I plan to use this wording only to target the 'geeks' (those who may be early adopters, contributors), those who see Google more like a very innovative tech giant rather than just a search engine (2) As written at the bottom of the article (yes I acknowledge it's very very long) the master plan is as follow: 1. Build free software and charge for hosting, security of hosted data and enterprise support 2. With this money reduce prices, free the data and the access to scientific knowledge 3. With this money and this community create the open infrastructure to run these software and host this open data (3) I tried to make it clear by putting a large banner in the blog post in the section explaining what we currently have, in order to catch the eye of the bored one who will speed scroll: https://www.kerkour.fr/blog/bloom-a-free-and-open-source-google/#bloom-the-top-secret-master-plan-what https://www.kerkour.fr/blog/bloom-a-free-and-open-source-goo... (4) ACK, thank you, I will try to improve this
- Fej 7y ago
  Regarding (2), how are you funding the initial phase of the project? After all, you're offering 30 GB of storage - twice Google.
  - z0mbie42 7y ago
    Storage is very cheap. I did not expect to reach Google's scale during the next month so currently we are bootstrapped and rely on some AWS credits :)
    - nerdinary 7y ago
      So you're building the next Google... on Amazon. Gotcha.
    - fock 7y ago
      Not sure what kind of money you got, but for me S3-storage costs about 0.6USD/30GB*month. Multiply this by 100 and you got a bill of 60USD/month - which is not much if you are a cash-bloated startup but not really sustainable for a bootstrapped, non-exponential (that's the point when you're talking about challenges like climate change. stop growing) business, which want's to survive on user donations, once you reach several thousand users. If you got the really cheap stuff from online.net, I recommend you don't raise any hopes in Google-scale availability...
    - contrasti 7y ago
      AWS is not acceptable choice if you want to stand to your values, see e.g.: https://gizmodo.com/amazon-is-aggressively-pursuing-big-oil-as-it-stalls-ou-1833875828 https://gizmodo.com/amazon-is-aggressively-pursuing-big-oil-... In france you have OVH - the invest heavily in solar energy and build datacenters with low energy consumption in mind. That might be a better choice (not working for them).
      - DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
        OP should talk to Octave Klaba who is very approachable and a big supporter of the FOSS spirit. maybe he can cut you a good price. I'd certainly try him (add him on LinkedIn and pitch it ... or oles at ovh.net )
JohnFen 7y ago
> When I think Google I think "search" first and foremost, and I didn't see a search demo or anything. I was expecting something related to search as well. This project is about the Google applications, though. That's ambitious and a great thing! I wish the devs the best of luck! Sadly, though, I don't use those sorts of online apps and so I'm not in the target market.
- z0mbie42 7y ago
  Thank you! Offline first[0] is planned for Q3/Q4 2019 :) [0] https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first.html https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first.html
- Kamshak 7y ago
  Same here, expected to see an open source search. Maybe you can find a better tagline :)
nikkiofearth 7y ago
+1 on the search part. I fully expected a search bar on the landing page and just got sign-up and feature page. Seeing any form hits the : interest level exceeded: mark for me, but I'm so for supporting anti-google that I will wait for you to have bloom.sh have a nice big search bar in the middle like https://duckduckgo.com/ https://duckduckgo.com/

z0mbie42 7y ago

Hi, Thank you very much for these encouraging words! (1) You are totally right, I plan to use this wording only to target the 'geeks' (those who may be early adopters, contributors), those who see Google more like a very innovative tech giant rather than just a search engine (2) As written at the bottom of the article (yes I acknowledge it's very very long) the master plan is as follow: 1. Build free software and charge for hosting, security of hosted data and enterprise support 2. With this money reduce prices, free the data and the access to scientific knowledge 3. With this money and this community create the open infrastructure to run these software and host this open data (3) I tried to make it clear by putting a large banner in the blog post in the section explaining what we currently have, in order to catch the eye of the bored one who will speed scroll: https://www.kerkour.fr/blog/bloom-a-free-and-open-source-google/#bloom-the-top-secret-master-plan-what https://www.kerkour.fr/blog/bloom-a-free-and-open-source-goo... (4) ACK, thank you, I will try to improve this

Fej 7y ago
Regarding (2), how are you funding the initial phase of the project? After all, you're offering 30 GB of storage - twice Google.
- z0mbie42 7y ago
  Storage is very cheap. I did not expect to reach Google's scale during the next month so currently we are bootstrapped and rely on some AWS credits :)
  - nerdinary 7y ago
    So you're building the next Google... on Amazon. Gotcha.
  - fock 7y ago
    Not sure what kind of money you got, but for me S3-storage costs about 0.6USD/30GB*month. Multiply this by 100 and you got a bill of 60USD/month - which is not much if you are a cash-bloated startup but not really sustainable for a bootstrapped, non-exponential (that's the point when you're talking about challenges like climate change. stop growing) business, which want's to survive on user donations, once you reach several thousand users. If you got the really cheap stuff from online.net, I recommend you don't raise any hopes in Google-scale availability...
  - contrasti 7y ago
    AWS is not acceptable choice if you want to stand to your values, see e.g.: https://gizmodo.com/amazon-is-aggressively-pursuing-big-oil-as-it-stalls-ou-1833875828 https://gizmodo.com/amazon-is-aggressively-pursuing-big-oil-... In france you have OVH - the invest heavily in solar energy and build datacenters with low energy consumption in mind. That might be a better choice (not working for them).
    - DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
      OP should talk to Octave Klaba who is very approachable and a big supporter of the FOSS spirit. maybe he can cut you a good price. I'd certainly try him (add him on LinkedIn and pitch it ... or oles at ovh.net )

JohnFen 7y ago

> When I think Google I think "search" first and foremost, and I didn't see a search demo or anything. I was expecting something related to search as well. This project is about the Google applications, though. That's ambitious and a great thing! I wish the devs the best of luck! Sadly, though, I don't use those sorts of online apps and so I'm not in the target market.

z0mbie42 7y ago
Thank you! Offline first[0] is planned for Q3/Q4 2019 :) [0] https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first.html https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first.html
Kamshak 7y ago
Same here, expected to see an open source search. Maybe you can find a better tagline :)

nikkiofearth 7y ago

+1 on the search part. I fully expected a search bar on the landing page and just got sign-up and feature page. Seeing any form hits the : interest level exceeded: mark for me, but I'm so for supporting anti-google that I will wait for you to have bloom.sh have a nice big search bar in the middle like https://duckduckgo.com/ https://duckduckgo.com/