[data_spy]

There is a legitimate start-up that basically is outsourcing tasks to a digital personal assistant but they log all questions and their researched answers. It make take a while but they will have a moat within a few years with a really robust repository.

[brandonhorst]

The problem is that this then becomes a cache invalidation problem. Many of the examples presented will be outdated in 1 year, and completely wrong in 5. How can you know which answers need to turnover and when?

[xwdv]

Another startup can provide cache invalidation services for knowledge.

[researchers]

That's definitely one way to do it. Our approach is not to literally run a concierge search engine, but rather build up intuitions on how humans effectively find knowledge on the Web and then build tools to make that easier.

Is that the end-game of the startup you mentioned?

[Seirdy]

How can users be sure that "results" aren't sponsored?

I imagine that whoever runs such a service would get hounded by paid placement opportunities if it takes off. A similar issue plagues browser extension devs.