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Maybe. I worked at Google on the indexing team from 2006-2010. During that time, I vaguely remember some announcement of a government-funded search engine pro

by KMag 5y ago

Maybe. I worked at Google on the indexing team from 2006-2010. During that time, I vaguely remember some announcement of a government-funded search engine project in France to beat Google. If I remember correctly, it wasn't the first time France tried a government-funded search engine. I suspect it's more a problem of network effects than it's a problem of money. Google just has so much data at this point that it's really tough to get marginally enough better search results than Google to get a significant number of people to switch. Personally, I use DDG for ideological reasons. I hope competition heats up in the ads and search spaces, but I'm not holding my breath, even with significant government funding. In my time at Google, I also remember being slightly concerned about Cuil. Cuil was started by some ex-Googlers and had some sophisticated machine learning algorithms to find images to attach at the top of most search results pages. They were well-funded and supposedly had a larger corpus than Google. On launch day, Cuil inexplicably attached the image of a porn star with an unrelated name to a journalist's search for his own name. It also had tons other very bizarre choices of images, all inexplicably blamed on scaling issues due to unanticipated demand. Also, at the time that Yahoo shut down its search infrastructure to outsource Bing's search back-end, our internal quality metrics actually showed Yahoo ahead of Bing. I'm sure getting all of that Yahoo traffic to siphon up more behavioral data helped Bing's search results in the long term.

riffraff 5y ago
I think you're thinking of Quaero[0], as I remember it nobody in the ITC industry thought it had a chance. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaero
spoonjim 5y ago
The biggest blocker is talent. Who’s going to join the French Government’s Google at 1/3 the pay with no sushi in the cafeteria?
- speedgoose 5y ago
  There is plenty of extremely talented people who do not work for Google or any random unicorn in California. Some people prefer to stay where they currently live. And you are not going to make many Frenchmen move continent for an American cafeteria menu.
  - spoonjim 5y ago
    There are some extremely talented French people but why would they work for the French government instead of remotely for... whoever they want? Unless they don’t speak English.
    - speedgoose 5y ago
      Working for the government can be more meaningful than selling to companies available human brain time for example. Also, working remotely is not for everyone or possible in every company.
      - spoonjim 5y ago
        I can understand government work being meaningful if you’re doing something that can’t be done in the private sector like setting policy, regulatory compliance, working on health or climate change etc, but why would it be meaningful to help the French government build a shitty Google clone, to the tune of a 2/3 pay cut?
        speedgoose 5y ago
        It could be so many reasons. Perhaps to actually build a search engine. I doubt anyone is building Google Search from scratch anymore at Google. And also it's not like you work for the French government, the French government is funding your company to support innovation. Most governments do that, by giving money or allowing tax optimization.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  "pay with no sushi in the cafeteria?" Look you mock french for many things, but food is not one of them
Animats 5y ago
In my time at Google, I also remember being slightly concerned about Cuil. Cuil was started by some ex-Googlers and had some sophisticated machine learning algorithms to find images to attach at the top of most search results pages. They were well-funded and supposedly had a larger corpus than Google. Not that well funded. They had about $30m of VC money, ran through it, and shut down suddenly. They also had a terrible crawler, noted for hitting sites over and over at high rates for no useful reason. I talked to their people. I asked them how they planned to get to profitability, since they didn't run ads. They didn't have an answer to that. Right now, Neeva, and You are search startups in similar positions. Neeva is operating, and you can get on their wait list. They have a very intrusive questionnaire you have to answer to get in. Rather than tracking what you do on line, they just ask you.

by KMag 5y ago

riffraff 5y ago

I think you're thinking of Quaero[0], as I remember it nobody in the ITC industry thought it had a chance. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaero

spoonjim 5y ago

The biggest blocker is talent. Who’s going to join the French Government’s Google at 1/3 the pay with no sushi in the cafeteria?

speedgoose 5y ago
There is plenty of extremely talented people who do not work for Google or any random unicorn in California. Some people prefer to stay where they currently live. And you are not going to make many Frenchmen move continent for an American cafeteria menu.
- spoonjim 5y ago
  There are some extremely talented French people but why would they work for the French government instead of remotely for... whoever they want? Unless they don’t speak English.
  - speedgoose 5y ago
    Working for the government can be more meaningful than selling to companies available human brain time for example. Also, working remotely is not for everyone or possible in every company.
    - spoonjim 5y ago
      I can understand government work being meaningful if you’re doing something that can’t be done in the private sector like setting policy, regulatory compliance, working on health or climate change etc, but why would it be meaningful to help the French government build a shitty Google clone, to the tune of a 2/3 pay cut?
      - speedgoose 5y ago
        It could be so many reasons. Perhaps to actually build a search engine. I doubt anyone is building Google Search from scratch anymore at Google. And also it's not like you work for the French government, the French government is funding your company to support innovation. Most governments do that, by giving money or allowing tax optimization.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
"pay with no sushi in the cafeteria?" Look you mock french for many things, but food is not one of them

Animats 5y ago

In my time at Google, I also remember being slightly concerned about Cuil. Cuil was started by some ex-Googlers and had some sophisticated machine learning algorithms to find images to attach at the top of most search results pages. They were well-funded and supposedly had a larger corpus than Google. Not that well funded. They had about $30m of VC money, ran through it, and shut down suddenly. They also had a terrible crawler, noted for hitting sites over and over at high rates for no useful reason. I talked to their people. I asked them how they planned to get to profitability, since they didn't run ads. They didn't have an answer to that. Right now, Neeva, and You are search startups in similar positions. Neeva is operating, and you can get on their wait list. They have a very intrusive questionnaire you have to answer to get in. Rather than tracking what you do on line, they just ask you.