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0 pointstinyhouse2y ago0 comments

Absurd. They have been doing search for so long and couldn't build their own search index? I understand it's a huge investment, and clearly for some data sources you need to create partnerships and depend on others (e.g., youtube videos). But you would think that a search engine company would invest more in this area.

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7 comments · 4 top-level

skeeter20202y ago· 2 in thread

Do you really understand the scale of this (ongoing) investment? I'm not sure I'd classify this as "Absurd" - the value of DDG is not yet-another (tm) search index but the specific values they add on top. When you have limited resources I'd say they're making the right choice.

somenameforme2y ago

Brave rolled their own completely independent search [1] on what I assume is a relatively limited budget. It seems that regularly grabbing the data would be pretty easy. The harder part would be searching/ordering it in an efficient and meaningful way while avoiding SEO, but that seems more like a fun problem than a difficult one (if not both).

[1] - https://search.brave.com/

There are two things the general HN sentiment genuinely believes is impossible to build unless you have billions of dollars:

- Search Engines

- Browser Engines

I don't quite understand how we got there because neither of those things are impossible. Both are achievable with a small team and a couple years of runway. As proved by Brave and Ladybird.

niutech2y ago· 1 in thread

Exactly. See Brave Search, they are much newer but did it right.

slig2y ago

Brave Search feels like Google from 2008. Just works, no BS.

ricardo812y ago

Building an organic dataset with decent results is the expensive and hard part. Weather, wiki etc are the kind of things you can develop on a $20/m dedicated server.

aembleton2y ago

I wonder if there's anything in their contract with Bing that prevents this.

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