alt Hacker NewsI miss Google of 2003
What would it take for someone to make it today? No AI, only 1 on mobile, and sites with heavy ad loads are punished
Replies
I think it would be easy to make, with two decades of hardware improvements.
The problem is that the web of 2003 doesn't exist any longer.
Google existence changed the websites for better or worse. The Google of 2003 is no longer capable of dealing with today's web SEO dirty tricks.
Install a spam filter for search engines, like uBlackList.
Use bunch of different search engines. In Firefox, enable search entry, then visit search engines and click green + in the entry, to add search engine.
Kagi and Phind are both impressing me. They both use AI but in ways I like.
It would take a benefactor who wants to pay for running it for its own sake and not for profit. As soon as there's a profit motive, enshittification sets in since you're serving whoever pays rather than your users.
Just traffic.
You're mostly describing Kagi. They do have AI results but you have to explicitly ask for them. They have an "No AI" image search option as well.
I also like my "Before AI" lens I can click on to search the internet pre-2021. And you can downrank or fully block those garbage spam sites. They even have a "leaderboard" for most blocked/pinned sites you can use to get started.