4 ms·

Google Search is ripe for disruption. It's been over 20 years now and they are not dynamic or interesting at all anymore.

emodendroket 5y ago
It's so easy to do better! Just look at what a rousing success Cuil was.
- kortilla 5y ago
  Nobody said it would be easy. Industries ripe for disruption are often very hard to break into. Being ripe for disruption is more about giving up on innovating so you stagnate.
LeoPanthera 5y ago
I still think that the "Yahoo!" style web directory is a good model. A catalogue of hand-curated links has increasing value as the quality of Google results goes down. I was briefly going to write "I'm surprised that DMOZ[1] still exists" but it says "Copyright 2017 AOL" at the bottom so maybe it doesn't. Edit: ...and using the search box results in a 404 so I guess it's really dead huh. Edit 2: Apparently this is the successor! https://curlie.org/en https://curlie.org/en [1]: https://dmoz-odp.org https://dmoz-odp.org
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  The creation and maintenance of such a directory might additionally be more feasible now because sadly there are much fewer personal or independent websites instead of content hosted on large platforms.
- 0xbadcafebee 5y ago
  I just tried to use both to look up pharmacies via navigation.. With Dmoz after my second try I was able to find CVS, but I wasn't able to find it with Curlie.. It's not a bad idea to have a curated dataset of information. But clearly there are much better ways to navigate said information, which would include search, but also dynamic filters, predictive text, sorting algorithms, context awareness, etc. All of which... is built into modern search engines. So perhaps what we really want is a Wikipedia/OpenStreetMaps of curated, indexed, semantic content/links, that anyone can consume and write their own search interface for. Basically, an open data warehouse of website information.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  > A catalogue of hand-curated links has increasing value as the quality of Google results goes down. Who will pay for its creation, maintenance and hosting? Who will judge ranking, disputes, hacks? Who will have an eye on discrimination issues? Whose jurisdiction will be relevant (think GDPR or the Australian press "gag order" law in the case of that cleric accused of fondling kids)? Who will take care that the humans who will get exposed to anything from generic violence over vore/gore to pedo content get access to counseling and be fairly paid? Facebook, the world's largest website, hasn't figured out that one ffs. These questions are ... relatively easy to bypass with an automated engine (all issues can be explained away as "it was the algorithm" and IT-illiterate judges and politicians will accept this), but as soon as you have meaningful human interaction in the loop, you suddenly have humans that can be targeted by lawsuits, police measures and other abuse.
  - rchaud 5y ago
    It doesn't need to be a corporate enterprise that has to worry about all those things. People already share directories of links via Google Docs, Notion notebooks and the like.
  - derefr 5y ago
    > as soon as you have meaningful human interaction in the loop, you suddenly have humans that can be targeted by lawsuits, police measures and other abuse. In theory, you could have a curated directory whose hosting works like ThePirateBay, and whose maintainership is entirely anonymous authors operating over Tor (even though the directory itself holds nothing the average person would find all that objectionable.) Of course, there's no business model in that...
    - mschuster91 5y ago
      TPB is not a good example since they're allowing everything except pedo content, thus drastically shrinking their moderation workload. A site that wants to be compliant to the law in the major jurisdictions (US, EU) can't operate that way, not with NetzDG, copyright and other laws in play.
lemmiwinks 5y ago
The irony being that 20 (more like 25?) years Yahoo search was ripe for disruption... by Google :) Halt and Catch Fire [1] (As a nerd, I can say it's one of the few TV series that got the hackers spirit correctly) had a few episodes about the Google disruption. Like some people often say here, things come and go in circles... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire_(TV_series...
rickspencer3 5y ago
Neeva.com I am in the pre-release program. The hardest initial thing to get used to was not immediately scrolling down to the bottom to avoid all of the spam. I suspect that their methods are not much different than Google, but the experience has been so much better.
- kmonsen 5y ago
  I'm also testing neeva, do you know what they use to get the search results?
  - ColinHayhurst 5y ago
    Bing
- luke2m 5y ago
  I would rather not have a required sign in to a search engine, but looks interesting.
  - texasbigdata 5y ago
    That just implies locking into an ad supported model. Personally, would prefer to pay. Stewart Russel wrote in his book that when surveying humans the value they ascribed to not being able to google fo a year was something like $17,000 per year. Just some absurd number.
    - justinbaker84 5y ago
      It is not an ad supported model - it is a subscription model. I just signed up for it.
- justinbaker84 5y ago
  I just signed up for a trial with them after reading this post.

emodendroket 5y ago

It's so easy to do better! Just look at what a rousing success Cuil was.

kortilla 5y ago
Nobody said it would be easy. Industries ripe for disruption are often very hard to break into. Being ripe for disruption is more about giving up on innovating so you stagnate.

LeoPanthera 5y ago

I still think that the "Yahoo!" style web directory is a good model. A catalogue of hand-curated links has increasing value as the quality of Google results goes down. I was briefly going to write "I'm surprised that DMOZ[1] still exists" but it says "Copyright 2017 AOL" at the bottom so maybe it doesn't. Edit: ...and using the search box results in a 404 so I guess it's really dead huh. Edit 2: Apparently this is the successor! https://curlie.org/en https://curlie.org/en [1]: https://dmoz-odp.org https://dmoz-odp.org

Apocryphon 5y ago
The creation and maintenance of such a directory might additionally be more feasible now because sadly there are much fewer personal or independent websites instead of content hosted on large platforms.
0xbadcafebee 5y ago
I just tried to use both to look up pharmacies via navigation.. With Dmoz after my second try I was able to find CVS, but I wasn't able to find it with Curlie.. It's not a bad idea to have a curated dataset of information. But clearly there are much better ways to navigate said information, which would include search, but also dynamic filters, predictive text, sorting algorithms, context awareness, etc. All of which... is built into modern search engines. So perhaps what we really want is a Wikipedia/OpenStreetMaps of curated, indexed, semantic content/links, that anyone can consume and write their own search interface for. Basically, an open data warehouse of website information.
mschuster91 5y ago
> A catalogue of hand-curated links has increasing value as the quality of Google results goes down. Who will pay for its creation, maintenance and hosting? Who will judge ranking, disputes, hacks? Who will have an eye on discrimination issues? Whose jurisdiction will be relevant (think GDPR or the Australian press "gag order" law in the case of that cleric accused of fondling kids)? Who will take care that the humans who will get exposed to anything from generic violence over vore/gore to pedo content get access to counseling and be fairly paid? Facebook, the world's largest website, hasn't figured out that one ffs. These questions are ... relatively easy to bypass with an automated engine (all issues can be explained away as "it was the algorithm" and IT-illiterate judges and politicians will accept this), but as soon as you have meaningful human interaction in the loop, you suddenly have humans that can be targeted by lawsuits, police measures and other abuse.
- rchaud 5y ago
  It doesn't need to be a corporate enterprise that has to worry about all those things. People already share directories of links via Google Docs, Notion notebooks and the like.
- derefr 5y ago
  > as soon as you have meaningful human interaction in the loop, you suddenly have humans that can be targeted by lawsuits, police measures and other abuse. In theory, you could have a curated directory whose hosting works like ThePirateBay, and whose maintainership is entirely anonymous authors operating over Tor (even though the directory itself holds nothing the average person would find all that objectionable.) Of course, there's no business model in that...
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    TPB is not a good example since they're allowing everything except pedo content, thus drastically shrinking their moderation workload. A site that wants to be compliant to the law in the major jurisdictions (US, EU) can't operate that way, not with NetzDG, copyright and other laws in play.

lemmiwinks 5y ago

The irony being that 20 (more like 25?) years Yahoo search was ripe for disruption... by Google :) Halt and Catch Fire [1] (As a nerd, I can say it's one of the few TV series that got the hackers spirit correctly) had a few episodes about the Google disruption. Like some people often say here, things come and go in circles... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire_(TV_series...

rickspencer3 5y ago

Neeva.com I am in the pre-release program. The hardest initial thing to get used to was not immediately scrolling down to the bottom to avoid all of the spam. I suspect that their methods are not much different than Google, but the experience has been so much better.

kmonsen 5y ago
I'm also testing neeva, do you know what they use to get the search results?
- ColinHayhurst 5y ago
  Bing
luke2m 5y ago
I would rather not have a required sign in to a search engine, but looks interesting.
- texasbigdata 5y ago
  That just implies locking into an ad supported model. Personally, would prefer to pay. Stewart Russel wrote in his book that when surveying humans the value they ascribed to not being able to google fo a year was something like $17,000 per year. Just some absurd number.
  - justinbaker84 5y ago
    It is not an ad supported model - it is a subscription model. I just signed up for it.
justinbaker84 5y ago
I just signed up for a trial with them after reading this post.