mwmbl
Web and SaaS
search engine
SHOW HN2021
How HN took it
14 positive, 52 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 16 critical, out of 82 comments about the project. Thread score -0.01.
Idea: 9 for, 2 againstExecution: 0 for, 7 againstPricing: 0 for, 4 againstPerformance: 3 for, 1 againstDesign: 0 for, 2 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Results are very fast.
From 2 comments
It’s really fast - nice job! Can you elaborate on the ranking algorithm you are using? It seems that this will become more important as you index more pages.
tibbar on HNCongrats! Very nice to see results being lightning fast, I am getting 100-120ms response with network overhead included and that is impressive. The payload size of only 10-20kb…
freediver on HN
Non-profit search engines are needed.
From 1 comment
Non-profit search engines are needed. It will probably still be vulnerable to SEO but will more likely be resistant to become corrupt by the interest of "investors".
marcodiego on HN
Objections
Search results are not sensible for many queries.
From 1 comment
Hey, great project - the more competition in this space the better. To be honest, at the moment the algorithm doesn't return any sensible results for anything (at least that I…
Closi on HN
Donation funding may not cover running costs.
From 2 comments
Off-topic [0]: I would be very interested in an economic model that would work for such a search engine. Donations are fine, but (imho) it will take much more than that to keep…
amenod on HNThe central problem with this and similar endeavors: nobody is willing to pay what they are worth in ads. Let's say the average Google user in the US earns them $30/year. Are you…
KarlKemp on HN
Index is too small.
From 1 comment
Thanks for the detailed feedback! I think most of most of the problems here are because we have a really small index right now. Increasing the number of documents is our top…
daoudc on HN
Requests
Distributed crawler via browser extension or contributed browsing data.
From 2 comments
> We plan to start work on a distributed crawler, probably implemented as a browser extension that can be installed by volunteers. Is there a concern that volunteers could…
tomxor on HNCan you make it a contributory database? I wouldn't mind "donating" my browsing history and page downloads to build the index and train the algorithm. You'd have to find a way to…
smt88 on HN
Open source with a community and foundation governance.
From 1 comment
Make it open source and syndicate it. The goal is to get people to contribute both resources and code. Think about the Shopify as the model. Where many people contribute to…
WheelsAtLarge on HN
Questions
Why Python rather than a faster language?
From 1 comment
A laudable effort. Two questions: 1. What is the rationale behind choosing Python as a implementation language? Performance and efficiency are paramount in keeping operational…
wolfgarbe on HN
Why not use existing open source engines like Lucene or Solr?
From 1 comment
A laudable effort. Two questions: 1. What is the rationale behind choosing Python as a implementation language? Performance and efficiency are paramount in keeping operational…
wolfgarbe on HN
How is the index stored and how much compute is needed?
From 2 comments
How much compute, storage, and network speed would a minimal up-to-date web search engine need?
montebicyclelo on HNHow does someone economically store tens if thousands of terabytes of data needed for the indexes of a large scale search engine? And have the large server instances (lots of ram)?
aantix on HN
Alternatives named
Marginalia Search
From 1 comment
> Marginalia Search is fantastic, but it is more of a personal project than an open source community. And where's the community behind mwmbl project?
ortuman84 on HN
YaCy
From 1 comment
Check out YaCy. It's great if you're happy with slow search!
daoudc on HN
DuckDuckGo
From 1 comment
Hey, great project - the more competition in this space the better. To be honest, at the moment the algorithm doesn't return any sensible results for anything (at least that I…
Closi on HN
Ecosia
From 1 comment
> All other search engines that I've come across are for-profit. Please let me know if I've missed one! https://www.ecosia.org/ https://ask.moe/ https://ekoru.org/ I remember…
legofr on HN