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Ask HN: Is this the best way to build Google alternative?

4 points by blindprogrammer ↗ HN
The website would be an open-sourced version of Google search, with sections for tech sites, news sites, forums, finance sites, and so forth, similar to Craigslist. The site will be website-only, with no apps and no boosted JavaScript, using only the bare minimum.

The website will be run on donations like Wikipedia, and the links will be edited by users. If a certain website is full of spam and low-quality content, users will downvote it. When the vote reaches a certain threshold, that link will be delisted, similar to the stock market.

We will call this site "The Great Filter" or "The Open Source Search Engine." There will be no venture capitalists, no shady algorithms; everything will be transparent, and the filtering will be entirely done by users.

Unlike videos, which take a lot of bandwidth, this site will be all text and links, which is relatively cheap to host.

What major pitfalls am I overlooking here? One problem I can foresee is shady companies either hiring or bribing one of the editors or the majority of the editors. In that case, how does Wikipedia solve this problem when some countries want specific viewpoints to be represented on Wikipedia?

What do you think of this?

10 comments

[ 1.4 ms ] story [ 35.1 ms ] thread
lobito14
Build an AI, search engines are dead.
blindprogrammer
Unless you're not building graphics from scratch and competing with Nvidia, you're building just another wrapper that will soon be obsoleted by another company with billions of dollars.

In a gold rush, instead of selling large language models (LLMs), which are easily surpassed, sell the shovels, which are the graphic cards. Those are what give you the ultimate competitive advantage.

In the age of cars, rather than horses, you want to own the oil wells, not be the guy building the coffee cup holder.

The lower you sit in the technological stack, the more money, power, and leverage you will have in the age of AI.

juststartguide
I agree with you that the best way to make money consistently during a gold rush is to sell the shovels, but in the case of AI it's just impossible. There has been a GPU duopoly for like 20 years.

You could try making specialized chips for AI, like NPUs, but it requires a lot of money as well, as you'd need a big team of really smart ($$$) people.

And you're overestimating the speed and interest of big corporations. If you're making an application around an LLM (a wrapper) for a smaller market, Google/Alphabet or Microsoft or whatever isn't going to release a product which will make your company obsolete.

Not because they lack resources, but because many markets simply aren't interesting for companies of this size. And even if the market was attractive, giants move slower than startups, even if they keep pushing the narrative of being just as agile as they were when were starting.

There's a reason why they spend billions every year acquiring smaller companies.

jaredsohn
Sounds like the now defunct https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMOZ

Also, this just helps you find general sites and doesn't help you narrow down on answering specific questions (who's that actor? how do i fix this bug in my code? why won't my iphone power up any more?) although LLMs are probably taking over those areas anyway.

bruce511
>> If a certain website is full of spam and low-quality content, users will downvote it.

Good to know I can fire up a both which will down-vote my competitors so they get excluded from your system.

>> and the links will be edited by users.

thus motivating those with commercial web sites (who are getting a return from the links) to spend the most time editing the links. So basically a search engine run by SEO consultants?

Presumably you'll also be crawling and full-text search all links - otherwise what would people search on? And you expect donations to fund development, running costs, storage, cpu etc? Because, well, donations have worked out so well for so many projects so far? What will you fund it with until, you know, your site is Wikipedia scale (ie one of the very top sites in the internet?)

>> no shady algorithms; everything will be transparent,

sounds like an SEO dream. If I know exactly how to score points, then I can optimize my site for scoring points.

Frankly, to answer your question, no this isn't a Google alternative.

carlosjobim
Nobody donates to stuff like this. Even if they love it and use it everyday, they will never donate a dime to you. Expect to get a total of ten to twenty dollars per month in donations if you have 100 000 active users.

And then the vote manipulation, and just the fact that even smart people upvote and downvote like jackasses. The search results will become low in quality.

blindprogrammer
Do you realize that some multi-billion dollar, publicly traded companies rely heavily on volunteers who contribute content for free? Imagine if I came to you in 2005 and said, "Would you invest in a for-profit company where the vast majority of workers provide content without any expectation of payment?" You would probably refuse because it sounds like a stupid and unrealistic idea.

But here we are in 2024. Not only has this company succeeded by getting free labor to build itself, but it has also gone public, become valued in the billions of dollars, and made its owners and investors incredibly wealthy. That company is Reddit.

Meanwhile, the people who create the content that makes Reddit what it is are not paid a cent.

carlosjobim
And where does Reddits income come from? From what it seems, it's just three letter organizations paying for a direct propaganda channel. That could be good business for a search engine as well, not going to deny that.
wruza
links will be edited by users. If a certain website is full of spam and low-quality content, users will downvote it

Links will be also added, edited and up/downvoted by bots and ideological armies, and counteracting that is the most impossible task you are facing.

Otherwise a great idea that died many times before.