@human_equivalent @dynamic Another thing that was a draw when GMail debuted was that it was emailed associated with Google. Almost kind of... prestigious?
Google was very popular, not just in the sense of people using it, but of *liking* it, having warm feelings and respect towards the brand. If I recall correctly relief, we were still in a period of "wow, a search engine that doesn't suck!" When they offered the email service, it was Google-branded, and that was exciting to people.
(There may have also been something about "yay, I'll be able to search my email effectively".)
But the invite-only aspect was also *huge*. Artificial scarcity is an amazing thing, and it acted as a prestige multiplier.
@varx @human_equivalent @dynamic I thought there were effective search engines before Google; I was happy with Alta Vista. My choices in browsers were limited, being an OS/2 user, and search engines are driven by browser inclusion.
@lwriemen @varx @human_equivalent
Even if there were effective search engines (and I honestly can't remember how well they functioned; I think I used Yahoo!... Yahoo! did have search engine, didn't it?), there definitely was an aura of prestige around Google. Like they *told* us they worked better, and whether it was true or not, people seemed to believe it.
@dynamic @varx @human_equivalent I think we are at a point now of ineffective search engines. An effective search engine should be company agnostic, non-tracking, open, relevant (topical and up to date), and thorough (all results). Unfortunately, users are stuck with Google and Bing. Both fail the company agnostic, non-tracking, open, and relevant aspects. Aggregators can fight the non-tracking, but all the other flaws exist. Open source search is badly needed.
@lwriemen @varx @human_equivalent
Are peer-to-peer web search engines a good idea? I'm interested to hear any thoughts.
I just did an internet search for open source search engines, and turned up some sort of peer-to-peer application called YaCy: https://opensource.com/article/20/2/open-source-search-engine
Anyone know anything about it?
@dynamic @varx @human_equivalent The MetaGer website also has links to some open source search work, IIRC.
@lwriemen @varx @human_equivalent
I've been wondering about open source search engines too. I don't know much about what the barriers are to making that a thing, but I agree that it would be very desirable.