Re:Google Loses DOJ Antitrust Suit Over Search
by hoistbypetard on Monday August 05, 2024 @04:58PM
(#41165555)
> Thus the meta-search engines like DogPile that would search "all" the search engines and give you a blended result.
There was a brief window where people would look at me like I was some kind of crazy wizard when they saw me use DogPile.
Prior to that, I used Watson[1] to accomplish something similar.
Re:Google Loses DOJ Antitrust Suit Over Search
by macintux on Monday August 05, 2024 @04:59PM
(#41165559)
Discovery in the mid-90s was excruciatingly bad. Google really did rescue the web in that regard.
I remember searching AltaVista for GNU’s website (at the time, they didn’t have their own domain, or weren’t using it) and I’m pretty sure I had to go to page 2 or 3 of the results to find it.
I don't think the search problem was considered solved. More like unsolvable. Some new search engine would show up every so often and be good, but fall into the same terrible abyss of mediocrity as all the others in 6-12 months. Thus the meta-search engines like DogPile that would search "all" the search engines and give you a blended result.
Google disrupted that by continuing to be good for at least 10 years before it fell into mediocrity. Unfortunately, the web has gotten so big that developing a new search engine is very expensive, and (IMHO) there hasn't been a new good search engine since Google. I've moved to DuckDuckGo, but I think it's only good enough, not good. I was at Yahoo when they launched their self-hosted search in 2004 and it was good, but they couldn't get enough marketshare to keep investing in it.