May I ask how do you plan to monetize this?
I like your privacy policy, but unless there is a good financial plan behind it, I have trouble seeing how it can be sustained
I like your privacy policy, but unless there is a good financial plan behind it, I have trouble seeing how it can be sustained
I wish something like the Web Monetization API was a viable path to monetization, but I don't think it is in the current state.
I believe the only current path to monetization that preserves user privacy is context based display ads that work like billboards in the real world. I am working on that now, but the idea is a flat fee to display the ad for N days regardless of views or clicks.
It is certainly challenging, but DDG and Startpage both exist and seem to be profitable.
The key is to monetize and 1.) ensure user privacy, 2.) ensure the monetization method doesn't create perverse incentives in contention of providing better search results for users.
The biggest issue I see with Google/Bing/AOL/Yahoo Search (and even DDG!) is malicious advertising. It's led me to the general view that any search ads are hostile by default, and I've often found outright dysfunction when it comes to shutting down bad actors.
The other issue I'd be curious about is your position on trademark squatting. i.e., where if I'm Best Buy, my competitors can buy ads over the search term "best buy", so if I want my own site to be the first "result" for my own business name, I have to buy ads.
Or you can just buy ads for a given "theme" and the search engine will try to interpret queries and assign theme the most close theme, displaying relevant ads.
Great question on trademark squatting, and I would love to hear the communities' thoughts.
If someone searches for 'nike shoes' and gets an ad for Reebok; is that useful to the user? Half of me thinks that it is not a relevant ad because the searcher clearly stated their intent, but the other half thinks that it might be because they are both shoe companies and their could be value in seeing related products from different brands.
I am leaning toward it not being a relevant ad, but I could see the argument the other way as well.
Of course, this problem could alternately be solved by always putting the trademark holder as the top result for the term, and showing relevant ads immediately below. You can still sell to competitors, but nobody feels like they're forced to pay you to own their own name, which is what happens at Google.
Selling the top result is possibly the most problematic thing about Google. And very few nontechnical users can even identify the first organic result. They click the ad thinking it's the top result, not because they found the ad valuable or relevant.
What does the rule look like that enforces that? No ads can be placed that contain the trademark of another company? Would that be too restrictive in practice?
So there should possibly be a way to register specific trademarks as having an authoritative destination that should be the top result, and above any ad placements, but any additional qualifiers in the search term beyond the trademark should exempt this behavior?
Then the users can choose themselves if they want to have a look there?
Or two columns: one with, one w/o ads