5 ms·

Some honest stabs in the past have been crushed, which has contributed to stagnation. You also don't have to "beat" them, to make a difference and contribution.

Some honest stabs in the past have been crushed, which has contributed to stagnation. You also don't have to "beat" them, to make a difference and contribution. Not everyone aspires to take over the world. Cooperation can help us; happy to explore with anyone.

marginalia_nu 5y ago
Yeah I largely agree. I don't think the aim should be to replace Google. A large part of the problem with our information access right now is that we have a google, when we could probably benefit from more disparate services for different needs. Right now Google is tackling website discovery, fact retrieval, shopping, "what's the address for that site I sometimes visit", and so on, through the same search bar, mostly by guessing what you want based on your search terms. Like a swiss army knife, which is capable of many things but not great at any particular thing, I think this is in the end incredibly limiting. If two people search for "coffee", one of them wanting to find a place to buy it, and the next looking for information about the beverage; there can't be one best result. You get this weird dance where the search engine attempts to read your mind about what you want, and you're attempting to read its mind about which terms it expects to show you what you want. Very frustrating. You can probably take any of these niches and make a superior product, something that isn't constrained to the search bar format. Right now I'm really sort of down a rabbit hole of finding new formats for discovering and exploring websites. Previously I've built <https://search.marginalia.nu/explore/random https://search.marginalia.nu/explore/random>, which led to the logical next step of <https://explore.marginalia.nu/ https://explore.marginalia.nu/>. They're just frivolous toys, but the more I dabble in this space the more I think there are viable alternatives to search bars and social bookmarking sites like Reddit and HN that deserve serious exploration.

marginalia_nu 5y ago

Yeah I largely agree. I don't think the aim should be to replace Google. A large part of the problem with our information access right now is that we have a google, when we could probably benefit from more disparate services for different needs. Right now Google is tackling website discovery, fact retrieval, shopping, "what's the address for that site I sometimes visit", and so on, through the same search bar, mostly by guessing what you want based on your search terms. Like a swiss army knife, which is capable of many things but not great at any particular thing, I think this is in the end incredibly limiting. If two people search for "coffee", one of them wanting to find a place to buy it, and the next looking for information about the beverage; there can't be one best result. You get this weird dance where the search engine attempts to read your mind about what you want, and you're attempting to read its mind about which terms it expects to show you what you want. Very frustrating. You can probably take any of these niches and make a superior product, something that isn't constrained to the search bar format. Right now I'm really sort of down a rabbit hole of finding new formats for discovering and exploring websites. Previously I've built <https://search.marginalia.nu/explore/random https://search.marginalia.nu/explore/random>, which led to the logical next step of <https://explore.marginalia.nu/ https://explore.marginalia.nu/>. They're just frivolous toys, but the more I dabble in this space the more I think there are viable alternatives to search bars and social bookmarking sites like Reddit and HN that deserve serious exploration.