Why There Aren't More Googles

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10525860

by CaiGengYang • 11 years ago

5 9 11 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Paul Graham wrote an essay : "Why There Aren't More Googles" --- http://www.paulgraham.com/googles.html.

In it, he referenced an essay by Umar Haque who wrote on the same issue. The link is in the first line of the essay.

I clicked it, but it gave an error message : https://hbr.org/error/page-not-found

Anyone knows where I can find a working link to this essay ?

dalke2• 11 years ago

There's an excellent site called 'archive.org', which has the quite honorable and noble goal of "universal access to all knowledge", which includes archiving the web.

They have been crawling the web for almost 20 years, and in this case they archived that URL several times in April of 2008. Here's a URL for one of those crawls: https://web.archive.org/web/20080428142826/http://discussion...

You really should explore what the Internet Archive offers. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Archive . The various presentations by Jason Scott, 'rogue archivist' are also entertaining, and give an idea of the spirit behind the Internet Archive, textfiles.com, and similar efforts.

CaiGengYang3• 11 years ago

Cool! Thanks for the link ...

It's a genuinely interesting question (at least to me) what the "next Google" is going to look like. Is there space to build a search engine that surpasses Google (given how fast and powerful Google already is) ?

Not sure if I am just imagining things , but it seems like Google has slowed down a little in recent years. When I type terms in the search bar nowadays (using a Mac laptop) and click the search button, it seems like there is a short (but barely perceptible) pause before the result is displayed. And Gmail seems to have slowed down quite abit too --- is it because Gmail is slow or I have a huge inbox? I seem to recall a time when Google was first launched, everything you did on it was virtually instantaneous. (Or am i just speculating and imagining things after reading this essay?)

Maybe the "next Google" won't be a search engine at all, but some kind of quantum computer skynet system that basically connects everyone on the planet instantaneously through thought processes or a futuristic 3d holographic hardware laptop that displays your screen and keyboard as floating 3d holograms that appear in front of your face , which you can manipulate with your fingers ..

THAT would be really cool lol !

dalke2• 11 years ago

I think you're speculating. What little evidence I know says that Google is worried about response time, and have strong economic justification to not let it go up. (For example, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/01/technology/impatient-web-u... ).

Google's initial response time was "virtually instantaneous" by comparison with Altavista. But recall how it used to be an actual form, where you had to submit a query? That took time. Since then, there are features like suggestions and results-while-typing, which help reduce the overall search time.

BTW, when you say "next Google", remember that you can't decouple Google from its advertising-based revenue model. It might not be possible for a search company that uses an another funding model, like DuckDuckGo, to be "a Google" in terms of size and income.

Floating VR controls don't work so well. It's very tiring to keep your arms out in front of your face. I used to work in a VR project, and had the advantage of being a fencer, so I could keep my arm in front of me longer than my co-workers.

Personally, there's still a lot of space left for the "connects everyone" model. What's really missing, and is hard to do, is prioritize connections correctly. That depends very much on personal interests, relationships, and current mood - all of which are hard to determine algorithmically.

The idea in my vision would be to ask something like 'who knows something about writing Excel files?' - a low priority task - and get a response within a couple of hours when a friend who has the experience also has the time to discuss things with you. Or, 'is anyone else interested in going to the beach tomorrow?' and have it only go to those who you are actually interested in going to the beach with.

Basically, personal assistants that coordinate with each other "the right way". A very hard problem to solve. But then again, personal travel advisers were also once a common thing, and useful spam filters non-existent.

Gustomaximus• 11 years ago

Adwords and to a lesser degree Analytics appears to be slowing down. I've also wondered if the data levels are getting massive and the systems need to have some next level discovery/overhaul.

More generally it's amazing how good Google search is. You really feel it when you try the alternates with the exception of long tail searches. I find these days if I do longer search strings Google gets a bit lost, more so than in the past. This being a small % of searches makes it a limited issue.

I think the next search engine revolution will happen when someone does to Siri/Cortana what Google did for text search. Something that can do more than show information and be more a PA that can complete tasks.

roger_vg• 11 years ago

I think search is broken. People receive millions of results without meaning while they only read through the first 10-15 titles.

I believe there still is opportunity for new players. You don't need to deliver millions of results, just the 15 links that are really valuable and rich.

Why There Aren't More Googles

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