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Wow, search engines are having a busy day. First Brave and this one is on the front page. I said it about Brave's purcahse of the defunct Clickz, and I will sa

Wow, search engines are having a busy day. First Brave and this one is on the front page. I said it about Brave's purcahse of the defunct Clickz, and I will say it here: Privacy is a feature, not a platform. -- Building a business on this feature is not enough. It actually has to be better. Competing with Google's 20+ year and 500 billion dollar head-start on broad search seem foolish unless you are willing to buy up the talent and resources to go head-to-head. I'm not here to poo-poo effort, but I do think there is a better way. One based on niches and human curation. We can get around the problem of head-to-head competition with general search by focusing on better facets and data sets curated by subject matter experts. At least, that is one hypothesis.

rasengan 6y ago
You may be on to something here. In the past, most search engines started from DMOZ (now defunct) which was a simple, curated, directory.
- simplecto 6y ago
  I'm very serious about this space. Please reach out if anyone wants to connect and chat. Links in Profile!
gbmatt 6y ago
if the doj, etc. breaks google's stranglehold on search ads up into 2 or more independent search ad companies, then other non-big-tech search engines might have a chance at bidding for some of the 'default' provider lists for cell phones, browsers, etc. but as it is right now, google does not allow their search ads to be displayed on other search engines' search results. sucks!
codezero 6y ago
I did a lot of work on the community at Quora and my low-effort hot take is that subject matter experts don't get paid enough to do that kind of work, so you get grad students or hobbyists who put in effort while they are unemployed, but fizzle off when not, and they boil away leaving only the obsessive folks with an axe to grind. That's a problem to solve as well, but I think it could be solved if those subject matter experts were part of your business model and they were paid in some meaningful way.
- codezero 6y ago
  Sam - check your spam folder. I self host my email lol.

rasengan 6y ago

You may be on to something here. In the past, most search engines started from DMOZ (now defunct) which was a simple, curated, directory.

simplecto 6y ago
I'm very serious about this space. Please reach out if anyone wants to connect and chat. Links in Profile!

gbmatt 6y ago

if the doj, etc. breaks google's stranglehold on search ads up into 2 or more independent search ad companies, then other non-big-tech search engines might have a chance at bidding for some of the 'default' provider lists for cell phones, browsers, etc. but as it is right now, google does not allow their search ads to be displayed on other search engines' search results. sucks!

codezero 6y ago

I did a lot of work on the community at Quora and my low-effort hot take is that subject matter experts don't get paid enough to do that kind of work, so you get grad students or hobbyists who put in effort while they are unemployed, but fizzle off when not, and they boil away leaving only the obsessive folks with an axe to grind. That's a problem to solve as well, but I think it could be solved if those subject matter experts were part of your business model and they were paid in some meaningful way.

codezero 6y ago
Sam - check your spam folder. I self host my email lol.