3 ms·
> My memories of the Good Old Days is that there are substantial economies of scale and economies of data in the search engine business. That's probably still
by epicureanideal 5y ago
> My memories of the Good Old Days is that there are substantial economies of scale and economies of data in the search engine business.
That's probably still true, but the equipment is probably 100x (maybe more) cheaper, reasonable ranking algorithms are widely known, and I'm sure there are a dozen other reasons why starting a search engine today is easier than it was in the past.
> And for general instance, the best search engine is the most popular one because it has a bigger index.
Unless the big search engine has systematic flaws in certain domains that give new entrants a niche in which they can be competitive. Classic disruption opportunities.
- s1artibartfast 5y agoBig search engines have huge flaws for users looking for specific content. Everything is crammed into the same funnel. Google tries to address some of this with niche indexes like scholar, but there is a huge pent up demand for people that want higher signal to noise. Google profits from low signal by selling priority. Imagine a future where people can filter buy blogs or forums or companies or government sites or any number of subsets of the internet