"Radiophone Transmitter on the U.S.S. George Washington (1920)
In 1906, Reginald Fessenden contracted with General Electric to build the first alternator transmitter. G.E. continued to perfect alternator transmitter design, and at the time of this report, the Navy was operating one of G.E.'s 200 kilowatt alternators
http://earlyradiohistory.us/1919wsh.htm
"
"I Looked and I Listened -- George Washington Hill extract (1954)
Although the events described in this account are undated, they appear to have occurred in late 1928. I Looked and I Listened, Ben Gross, 1954, pages 104-105: Programs such as these called for the expenditure of larger sums than NBC had anticipated. It be http://earlyradiohistory.us/1954ayl2.htm
"
Dramatically worse than Google.
---
Ok, how about a search for "Rome" then? Surely it'll pull some great text results for the city or the ancient empire.
Again, far off the mark and dramatically worse than Google.
I like the idea of Google having lots of search competition, this isn't there yet (and I wouldn't expect it to be). I don't think overhyping its results does it any favors.
What were you expecting to see for British? There must be millions of pages containing that term. Anyway the first screenful from Google is unadulterated crap, advertising mixed with the usual trivia questions.
If you are going top claim something is wide of the mark then you really ought to tell us at least roughly where the mark is.
This is not a Google competitor, it's a different type of search engine with different goals.
> If you are looking for fact, this is almost certainly the wrong tool. If you are looking for serendipity, you're on the right track. When was the last time you just stumbled onto something interesting, by the way?
I checked the results of the same query and they seem fine. Lots of speeches and articles about George Washington the US president. There's even his beer recipe.
As for the results you linked, it's part of the zeitgeist to list other entities sharing the same name. Sure, they could use some subtle changes in ranking, but overall the returned links satisfy my curiosity.
The project explicitly bills itself as a "search engine", not an "interesting and unexpected material surfacer". Moreover, projecting emotions like "angry" onto a comment in order to discredit the content of the comment (hey! is that an ad-hominem?) is just about exactly the opposite of the discussions that the HN mods are trying to curate, and the discussions that I like to see here.
If you click through to the About page, I think you'll see that "interesting and unexpected material surfacer" is a fairly apt description of the project.
I think in fairness that when "interesting and unexpected material surfacer" is merely a euphemism for "we didn't bother indexing the things you might actually be looking for", a degree of scepticism isn't unwarranted.
(Source: I looked up several Irish politicians because I run an all-text website containing every single word that they say in parliament. I got nothing of use, or even of interest, for anything.)
In the early days of google, I found what I was looking for on page 5+. On the way, I’d discover many interesting things I didn’t even know I was looking for, often completely unrelated to what I was searching for.
And now Google hides that more than one page even exists, as they populate their first page with buttons to ask similar questions and go to the first page of THOSE results.
> Hobby project leads angry person to interesting and unexpected material; angry person remains angry.
Not angry in the least. I'm thrilled someone is working on a search competitor to Google.
I understand you're attempting to dismiss my pointing out the bad results by calling me angry though. You're focusing your content on me personally, instead of what I pointed out.
The parent was far overhyping the results in a way that was very misleading (look, it's better than Google!). I tried various searches, they were not great results. The parent was very clearly implying something a lot better than that by what they said. The product isn't close to being at that level at this point, overhyping it to such an absurd degree isn't reasonable or fair to the person that is working on it.
I would specifically suggest people not compare it to Google. Let it be its own thing, at least for a good while. Google (Alphabet) is a trillion dollar company. Don't press the expectations so far and stage it to compete with Google at this point. I wouldn't even reference Google in relation to this search engine, let it be its own thing and find its own mindshare.
> I'm thrilled someone is working on a search competitor to Google.
Except the author goes to quite some lengths to explain that his search engine is not a competitor to Google, and is in fact exactly the opposite of Google in many ways: https://memex.marginalia.nu/projects/edge/about.gmi
First result after Wikipedia:
"Radiophone Transmitter on the U.S.S. George Washington (1920)
In 1906, Reginald Fessenden contracted with General Electric to build the first alternator transmitter. G.E. continued to perfect alternator transmitter design, and at the time of this report, the Navy was operating one of G.E.'s 200 kilowatt alternators http://earlyradiohistory.us/1919wsh.htm "
Another result in the first few:
" - VANDERBILT, GEORGE WASHINGTON
PH: (800) ###-#233 FX: (#03) 641-5###. https://www.ScottWinslow.com/manufacturer/VANDERBILT_GEORGE_... "
And just below that terrible result:
"I Looked and I Listened -- George Washington Hill extract (1954)
Although the events described in this account are undated, they appear to have occurred in late 1928. I Looked and I Listened, Ben Gross, 1954, pages 104-105: Programs such as these called for the expenditure of larger sums than NBC had anticipated. It be http://earlyradiohistory.us/1954ayl2.htm "
Dramatically worse than Google.
---
Ok, how about a search for "Rome" then? Surely it'll pull some great text results for the city or the ancient empire.
First result after Wikipedia:
"Home | Rome Daily Sentinel
Reliable Community News for Oneida, Madison and Lewis County http://romesentinel.com/"
The fourth result for searching "Rome":
"Glenn's Pens - Stores of Note
Glenn's Pens, web site about pens, inks, stores, companies - the pleasure of owning and using a pen of choice. Direcdtory of pen stores in Europe. http://www.marcuslink.com/pens/storesofnote/roma.html"
Again, dramatically worse than Google.
---
Ok, how about if I search for "British"?
First result after Wikipedia:
"BRITISH MINING DATABASE
British_Mining_Database http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~lizcolin/bmd.htm "
And after that:
"British Virgin Islands
Many of these photos were taken on board the Spirit of Massachusetts. The sailing trip was organized by Toto Tours. Images Copyright © Lowell Greenberg Home Up Spring Quail Gardens Forest Home Lake Hodges Cape Falcon Cape Lookout, Oregon Wahkeena http://www.earthrenewal.org/british_virgin_islands2.htm"
Again, far off the mark and dramatically worse than Google.
I like the idea of Google having lots of search competition, this isn't there yet (and I wouldn't expect it to be). I don't think overhyping its results does it any favors.