[pydry]

>But as mentioned index and ranking are inextricably tied together.

I'm pretty sure they're quite extricably tied together. I'm almost certain google's engine weights the different ranking variables (e.g. page speed) differently depending upon context. Why not expose those variables to other search engines? Well, it would kill google's search engine dominance - if you're concerned with that...

Unbundling isn't technically infeasible and it would create more competition. This would help with the arms race alluded to. What if another search engine used google's index to build a more spam free index? not good for google but great for Joe public.

>Motivation: If search is open and you therefore can't directly profit from your efforts to improve it (because you automatically give away anything you create to competitors) where is your motivation to keep innovating?

Nothing saying that they can't make money from the users of their index just as Bing makes money from DDG. However, is there any reason their search engine shouldn't compete with other similar offerings? Maybe somebody out there does it better.

Well, other than "we've got an unfair advantage and wed like to keep it please"

>It's harder than you think

Actually it's probably a LOT easier. This idea is a direct attack on google's power and the easiest response they can make is "too difficult. not possible". Not "this would fuck us in the bottom line". Simply "we can't do it, who are YOU to tell us it's possible? "

fwiw if you look through history similar reactions were made to attempts to regulate pretty much all utilities. Then it happened. This kind of response is kind of an expected part of the process. Most recently it happened in the UK when utilities and banks were told to open up API access to their data. Same claim you made.

Part two is when they tell you "it's not fair!". It's coming.

[post_below]

Bing's index and algos are not available to DDG, there's no comparison there. DDG uses Bing's results, they can't see how they're produced. Incidentally, Google offers a similar API.

> Actually it's probably a LOT easier

Can you support that claim?

Just the scale alone is mind boggling when it comes to search.

Then throw in natural language processing, contextual signals, hubs and authorities, content categorization (which grows ever closer to looking like actual understanding), machine learning, a host of other basic and ever evolving quality signals that exist both in and inter-dependently of one another, the more complex signals that arise from the above and on and on.

Search is hard. Even the most casual of Googling (or maybe Binging would be apt in this case) will provide you with endless info about how hard it is.

[pydry]

"Search is hard" deliberately misses the point. This isn't about whether search is hard it's about whether decoupling search engine from search index is hard - whether the APIs used by one could be used by others.

This trick you're echoing is, incidentally, used every single time a government comes looking at unbundling opporunities. I remember distinctly how Microsoft claimed it was "too hard" to decouple office from windows. The banks in the UK made the same claim. They were all equally ridiculous and all equally self serving. There is a lot of precedent here.

Google will pretend that it is "impossibly hard" to expose their internal APIs as well, just as every other company did. It would be surprising if they didn't.

Search is hard, yes. A lot harder than exposing APIs, isn't it?