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How to Build a Search Engine

Posted by michael on from the some-assembly-required dept.

CowboyRobot writes "Three years ago, former Infoseek developer Matt Wells decided to go solo and build his own search engine, Gigablast. In this article, Infoseek founder Steve Kirsch interviews his former employee about the process and challenges of creating a modern, scalable search engine. From the article: 'Search is a fiercely competitive arena, even though there are really only five Web search companies today: Google, Yahoo (Altavista/AlltheWeb/Inktomi), Looksmart (Wisenut), AskJeeves (Teoma), and Gigablast. It's a tight little community, and a lot of the people know and watch each other. Microsoft is also coming to the party, and everyone's a little bit nervous to see what it's bringing.'"

20 of 270 comments (clear)

  1. Lol by SugoiMonkey · · Score: 5, Funny

    "even though there are really only five Web search companies today: Google, Yahoo (Altavista/AlltheWeb/Inktomi), Looksmart (Wisenut), AskJeeves (Teoma), and Gigablast " Gigawho? You silly goose.

    1. Re:Lol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

      what kind of faggot says "silly goose"?

      Why, silly faggots, of course!

  2. Not *that* complicated by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
    This will cover about 50% of your job:
    select * from internet where keywords like '%asian sex free pics%';
  3. Humph by SlamMan · · Score: 4, Funny

    "and everyone's a little bit nervous to see what it's bringing.'"

    Money. Lots and lots of money.

    --
    Mod point free since 2001
    1. Re:Humph by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      >> It's implied. Lawyers go wherever the money is.

      Not in every instance. Some lawyers suck so much the money comes right to them.

  4. Microsoft at the party by bigberk · · Score: 1, Funny

    Microsoft at the party would probably look something like this
    "Pass the dip, guys!"

  5. In my opinion..... by Kenja · · Score: 4, Funny
    In my opinion the best search engine is a Ford T-Block. Put that into a light weight steel frame and we can search them down and kill em in the street like wild animals.

    Whoa, hold on. Wrong site. Never mind.

    --

    "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
  6. BOOBLE! by the+MaD+HuNGaRIaN · · Score: 4, Funny

    What about BOOBLE.

  7. Nice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    I found over one million hit for XXX and not even one hit as far as I could tell to do with the fucking vin desal pice of shit movie.

  8. Re:How to Build a Search Engine? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny
    Fourth, question-mark question-mark question-mark

    Fifth, Profit.

  9. Re:Matt's a good guy by cybermace5 · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm glad you told everyone he's a good guy, for a minute there I just assumed he was an evil, scheming villain.

    --
    ...
  10. Re:Hmmm.... by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 4, Funny
    Gigablast: "273,384,720 pages indexed"
    Google: "Searching 4,285,199,774 web pages" That's quite a big difference.

    At least this Gigablast name is closer to the truth. They are only exaggerating their page count by a factor of 3.7 : 1.

    By my math, Google comes up short by 2.3x10^90 : 1.

  11. Gigabooo by vinit79 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Gigablast sucks : Proof - I entered my name and Gigablast says "no results". Did u mean "something thats not my name". No thanx I did not

    Google : My site is the first !!!

    And of course I refuse to believr that anyone in the world would be interested in anything but my home page.

  12. How to build a search engine? by bakawally · · Score: 3, Funny

    I dunno. I better google it.

  13. In other news... by sydbarrett74 · · Score: 4, Funny

    'In other news, Google announced the buy-out of Gigablast. The newly-formed company will be called Giggle.'

    --
    'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
  14. Check out my search engine! by Milton+Waddams · · Score: 2, Funny
    function search(){
    grep $1 < The_Internet
    }
  15. Re:Only five? by pe1chl · · Score: 3, Funny

    When an American writes "there are only five companies that..." he really means: "there are only five companies IN THE USA that...".

  16. Make it like a human brain... by Pedrito · · Score: 4, Funny

    I liked this quote: "Now that the Internet is very large, it makes for some well-developed memory. I would suppose that the amount of information stored on the Internet is around the level of the adult human brain. Now we just need some higher-order functionality to really take advantage of it. At one point we may even discover the protocol used in the brain and extend it with an interface to an Internet search engine."

    The protocol used in the brain? That can't be a good direction to go. I mean, if it's anything like my memory and honestly, the memory of most people I know, it's definitely going to be a step backwards. Human brains can hold a lot of information, but retreival is definitely not its specialty. I can see it now. Type in my search terms and the engine comes back with, "ummm, it's right on the tip of my tongue. Okay, I don't have a tongue, but I just about remember it. Give me just a minute to think about it. umm... umm... Nope, it's gone. Nevermind."

  17. To quote Trump.."youre fired!" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    I'd fire you in an instant with sloppy code like that.

    You forgot to add "Order by nipple_size desc".

  18. How to create a web search engine... by fizban · · Score: 2, Funny

    1. Buy license for existing web search engine.
    2. ???
    3. Profit!

    --

    +1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.