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Comment by akst | Hacker News Reader

> A hypothetical US gov't, benevolent and markedly less corrupt than the current one

If we’re pretending this is taking place in another reality what are we hoping to learn from this hypothetical?

> with the express intent to return Google Search to 2010 levels of efficacy and to remove all LLM functions from both its frontend and backend

It would be simpler for the US govt to build such a search engine like that today as google was a lot simpler back then, however it wouldn’t work because the internet has changed as much as Google has.

If the goal is to make the internet search better via intervention it might be simpler to force Google to share relevant patents for free with competitors and new market entrants, and doesn’t require a benevolent government to work either.

Even without that kagi exists and it’s fine

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>It would be simpler for the US govt to build such a search engine like that today as google was a lot simpler back then, however it wouldn’t work because the internet has changed as much as Google has.

You're targeting the efficacy, not the means. Google reached almost every page, served dynamically or not, with metadata and cache freely viewable, and served a relevant slice based on the actual search query that was actually submitted. We can do that again. It would piss off a lot of platform owners. I don't care. I want it back. Fuck Zuck.

>Even without that kagi exists and it’s fine

No lol

> No lol

It's suggestion not a instruction, and It's a certainly a more useful suggestion than a bunch of people make demands of google and the US govt that will never be realised.

> We can do that again. It would piss off a lot of platform owners

Fair, stuff is more locked down now and stuff is harder to crawl. But if we're entering intervention then you may as well entertain idea's closer to what has been political feasible in the past, like requiring google to provide metered API access to this archived data to train competitors, like how AT&T also was required to license UNIX patents to others looking to build software on its systems. Its closer inline to what anti trusts in the past have accomplished.

The problem with nationalising google and making it free is, operating google for free just isn't feasible. Google provides a free service because it elevates their paid services and users on it provides value to their other services. Even with a feature freeze google still crawls the web and collects information to improve its results which has an on going marginal cost. Say it happens, you nationalise Google Search. how long till the elected officals who just see the on going costs (and not costs avoided) starts complaining about how much keeping it operation costs? The political economy isn't feasible either.

If you want to improve search, I think its best to start with addressing entry barriers, which in this case is massive fixed costs.

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