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Comment by Larrikin | Hacker News Reader

I assume it will be with a PhD thesis similar to how Google started and not an off the cuff response to an Internet comment.

Although it would be nice if it truly were that easy.

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It is that easy, the thesis is already on the internet. reboot pagerank and dump the NLP. Flag sites that create content too fast and let users find webpages that match their query.

This would be difficult today because this would still be a niche thing as that ship has sailed since Google has tethered itself everywhere.

Every time you enumerate another method for making a functional search engine right now, you also posit a way for it to be circumvented in an hour or two.

"Oh, it's easy! Just bring PageRank back, and flag sites that create content too fast!"

Later that afternoon: sites multiply, and individually generate content slowly

Google is at an advantage here. They can see into their own blackbox and instantly change the rules whenever they want. The abusers have to wait a while to see the results of their experiments, knowing that Google can put all that effort to waste instantly.

It does feel like people don't give Google enough credit that, even in it's current state, they still do a pretty good job in the face of basically every bad actor on the internet.

the pragmatic solution is simply to build your own, personal, dead internet.

Pagerank alone was subverted pretty early on, which is why Google started bring additional signals into things.

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