Ask HN: Question about search engine feasability
However, we don't need to use all of the web. There are more web pages out there than we can ever visit in our lifetimes, even if we restrict it to just those in our own language. What we need, is to be able to find usable web pages, that aren't bloated/buggy/intrusive/etc. For this, I wonder if the browser is not the tool that needs to change, but rather the search engine.
So, if one made a search engine that only displayed results whose total content was below some user-set limit, or that had some other configurable filter (no javascript, no cross-origin content, etc.), is there enough out there still to have a usable amount of content? I have the idea that there is a nice, text-based, non-intrusive, non-bloated web still out there, it's just buried under a pile of bloated crapware. If we had a search engine that could sift the wheat from the chaff, would there be enough wheat left to stay informed? (my apologies to gluten-intolerant readers for my wheat metaphor)
Thing is, I am not an expert in this field. But, perhaps on Hacker News there are people who have some experience at what it takes to build a search engine. Does this seem feasible? Especially let me know if this has already been tried and failed.