Comments on: Google’s “Open” Philosophy and the Conspicuous Lack of Open-Source Search

By: caroljns8

caroljns8 — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 08:31:07 +0000

It may also be that Google’s congregation of developers is so large, that it has become a cathedral and a bazaar at the same time. Meaning that Google may have a large enough number of fast and relatively independent developers to mimic how an open-source community.
Mio Navman Spirit S300

By: caroljns8

caroljns8 — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 03:31:07 +0000

By: balleyne

balleyne — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 19:45:28 +0000

I think part of the problem with free software competitors to Google is that it's very hard to switch to a search engine that's under development. I can use an OpenMoko phone, which means it takes a few minutes to boot up, and I can't handle call switching to text multiple people at the same time, and make those tradeoffs. I can carry a second phone around (as I did at first), or just figure out how to make it work.

But to switch to Wikia? Well, I tried using it when they were trying to build a search engine... and it was great to see it under development.. but if you're researching something, you're not going to say "oh, yes, I'll take sub-par results today because I want to support the development." I mean, if you were looking up someone in the phone book, you wouldn't want to use a phone book that was incomplete.

It's just tough to switch away from Google until someone else offers comparable results, but it's tough for someone else to offer comparable results if people aren't using/testing the search engine. The real switching costs are during development...