4 ms·

Exactly, I think the failure of such project is embedded in the incentives. OpenMaps are good but you’re not going to convince Google to make them default on An

Exactly, I think the failure of such project is embedded in the incentives. OpenMaps are good but you’re not going to convince Google to make them default on Android. The correct strategy isn’t to hand this over to a giant bureaucracy, but to create an atmosphere where we can have a dozen alternatives to Google.

cloutchaser 4y ago
The only way you can beat google is to create a search engine in a small niche where they can’t compete, then eventually over the years expand into general search once they can’t catch up (innovators dilemma basically). The only search product that comes close to this is Amazon search or booking.com (or maybe YouTube). All multi billion dollar businesses. And when smaller ones emerge like the flight scanner one, google buys them. I don’t see google going anywhere soon. They have a lot of faults but they’re still too good.
- supermatt 4y ago
  > The only search product that comes close to this is Amazon search or booking.com (or maybe YouTube). What is so great about those search examples?
  - aydyn 4y ago
    Absolutely nothing, Amazon search is horrendous. Search by price is completely broken (and has been for years). Filter by exact phrase is non-existent. No way to search products by size, and on and on.
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  This is HN and we're not even pretending to be optimistic about beating incumbents, but it is much deeper than that - there is also a profound sense of defeatism directed towards European entrepeurs as well as the world at large. It is an indictment of the current nihilistic zeitgeist.
  - gnz11 4y ago
    Well, it is a forum run by a Silicon Valley VC firm … so of course there will be a bit of “only SV can do anything interesting in tech” gatekeeping going on.
    - systemvoltage 4y ago
      Idk, even people here in SV has given up.
- newaccount74 4y ago
  In Austria there is "geizhals.at" [1], which is a price comparison website for electronics, and they have the best parametric search engine I have ever seen. It's 1000x better than Amazon search. However, there's no way Geizhals will ever expand into general search. The reason why they are so much better than the competition is that they are focussing on a small, profitable niche and presumably use manual data entry to ensure they have the best data. [1]: there's a UK version too "skinflint.co.uk"
  - Lio 4y ago
    Just opened skinflint.co.uk to have a look. I was greeted by "Do Not Track detected only storing necessary information". That's wonderful! I don't think I've seen a website that does that before and I think it's worth praising.
  - Akronymus 4y ago
    Geizhals is my go to for anything computer related. Somewhat amusing that such a good site comes out from this little country.
tyiz 4y ago
Exactly, neither Google nor Apple will open the gates to their fenced garden. It will always be more convenient for users to use their solution.
zaarn 4y ago
This does seem to be the goal of the project. They mention that they want to make a centralized control panel and crawler, where you can control how your website is crawled and when But at the end of the day the resulting dataset would be sold to third parties so they can rank the results appropriately. Which to me seems to be the only sane way forward. Only a government could run something the scale of the Google crawler and succeed at doing so. And then everyone can build search engines on top of that.
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  > And then everyone can build search engines on top of that. That bit troubles me. If the index is maintained by a government agency, and every search engine is using the same index, then that's a massive censorship avenue. I wonder how "open" Open Web Index is going to be.
  - zaarn 4y ago
    If the index is censored, nothing stops you from adding to the index yourself. The vast majority of the net is, after all, now indexed, so you can run your own indexer to cover whatever they didn't cover.

cloutchaser 4y ago

The only way you can beat google is to create a search engine in a small niche where they can’t compete, then eventually over the years expand into general search once they can’t catch up (innovators dilemma basically). The only search product that comes close to this is Amazon search or booking.com (or maybe YouTube). All multi billion dollar businesses. And when smaller ones emerge like the flight scanner one, google buys them. I don’t see google going anywhere soon. They have a lot of faults but they’re still too good.

supermatt 4y ago
> The only search product that comes close to this is Amazon search or booking.com (or maybe YouTube). What is so great about those search examples?
- aydyn 4y ago
  Absolutely nothing, Amazon search is horrendous. Search by price is completely broken (and has been for years). Filter by exact phrase is non-existent. No way to search products by size, and on and on.
systemvoltage 4y ago
This is HN and we're not even pretending to be optimistic about beating incumbents, but it is much deeper than that - there is also a profound sense of defeatism directed towards European entrepeurs as well as the world at large. It is an indictment of the current nihilistic zeitgeist.
- gnz11 4y ago
  Well, it is a forum run by a Silicon Valley VC firm … so of course there will be a bit of “only SV can do anything interesting in tech” gatekeeping going on.
  - systemvoltage 4y ago
    Idk, even people here in SV has given up.
newaccount74 4y ago
In Austria there is "geizhals.at" [1], which is a price comparison website for electronics, and they have the best parametric search engine I have ever seen. It's 1000x better than Amazon search. However, there's no way Geizhals will ever expand into general search. The reason why they are so much better than the competition is that they are focussing on a small, profitable niche and presumably use manual data entry to ensure they have the best data. [1]: there's a UK version too "skinflint.co.uk"
- Lio 4y ago
  Just opened skinflint.co.uk to have a look. I was greeted by "Do Not Track detected only storing necessary information". That's wonderful! I don't think I've seen a website that does that before and I think it's worth praising.
- Akronymus 4y ago
  Geizhals is my go to for anything computer related. Somewhat amusing that such a good site comes out from this little country.

tyiz 4y ago

Exactly, neither Google nor Apple will open the gates to their fenced garden. It will always be more convenient for users to use their solution.

zaarn 4y ago

This does seem to be the goal of the project. They mention that they want to make a centralized control panel and crawler, where you can control how your website is crawled and when But at the end of the day the resulting dataset would be sold to third parties so they can rank the results appropriately. Which to me seems to be the only sane way forward. Only a government could run something the scale of the Google crawler and succeed at doing so. And then everyone can build search engines on top of that.

denton-scratch 4y ago
> And then everyone can build search engines on top of that. That bit troubles me. If the index is maintained by a government agency, and every search engine is using the same index, then that's a massive censorship avenue. I wonder how "open" Open Web Index is going to be.
- zaarn 4y ago
  If the index is censored, nothing stops you from adding to the index yourself. The vast majority of the net is, after all, now indexed, so you can run your own indexer to cover whatever they didn't cover.