this post was submitted on 19 May 2024
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I had a similar idea: Could search engines be broken up and distributed instead of being just a couple of monoliths?
Reading the HN thread, the short answer is: NO.
Still, its fun to imagine what it might look like if only......
I think the OP is looking for an answer to the problem of Google having a monopoly that gives them the power to make it impossible to be challenged. The cost to replicate their search service is just so astronomical that its basically impossible to replace them. Would the OP be satisfied if we could make cheaper components that all fit together to make a competing but decentralized search service? Breaking down the technical problems is just the first step, the basic concepts for me are:
Crawling -> Indexing -> Storing/host index -> Ranking
All of them are expensive because the internet is massive! If each of these were isolated but still interoperable then we get some interesting possibilities: Basically you could have many smaller specialized companies that can focus on better ranking algorithms for example.
Sigh enough daydreaming already........