Wow, ambitious! Your sheer nerve is enough to click on the link and check it out. :)
As a potential early adopter that has seen countless would-be world-changing technology efforts come and go, in order to personally get me on the bandwagon, it would help to know a few things that didn't stand out to me at first, even after visiting the https://bloom.sh website.
(1) When I think Google I think "search" first and foremost, and I didn't see a search demo or anything. I think your average visitor is going to be thinking the same. If you're not involved in search, then branding yourself up as a Google alternative seems a bit off.
(2) How do you intend to sustain the project? Funding, grants, donations, paid plans, etc. More light on the team behind it as well perhaps, their incentives, skills, etc. I want to know that you have a reasonable chance of existing long enough to grind Google to the ground. :)
(3) A past version of myself would like to know more about "What's in it for me, like right now"? Saving the planet is all well and good, but I was a selfish short-term thinker.
(4) A future version of myself would like to know (assuming points (2) and (3) are answered to satisfaction) more about what I can do for you, but just in small ways, i.e. I don't/won't have the time to help with an iOS app. Practically speaking, this may just mean placing your donation links or "Subscribe for updates" buttons somewhere more prominent. I know some of this is included in your peer comment here on HN, so speaking about the websites only.
Anyway, good on you for releasing, and good luck! I'll be following the project!
Hi, Thank you very much for these encouraging words!
(1) You are totally right, I plan to use this wording only to target the 'geeks' (those who may be early adopters, contributors), those who see Google more like a very innovative tech giant rather than just a search engine
(2) As written at the bottom of the article (yes I acknowledge it's very very long) the master plan is as follow:
1. Build free software and charge for hosting, security of hosted data and enterprise support
2. With this money reduce prices, free the data and the access to scientific knowledge
3. With this money and this community create the open infrastructure to run these software and host this open data
FWIW, I work for Google (not on google.com), and would definitely fit into the "geek" category, and I still assumed you were talking about an OSS search engine.
Hi, currently we absolutely do not plan to create a search engine: it requires too much resources for self hosting,
I think we currently have great option for all the spectrum (From Google search to DuckDuckGo), and because an open source search engine will be tricked by all kind of nasty SEO Experts and it will be very hard to promote actually good Content.
I dared the Google comparison thinking about it's productivity suit, and because they have an app for all the need of our life. At an extraordinary price, even if it cost noting.
Productivity is the current foundation, but you can think having a Bloom open source tractor in some years :)
I think it's clear after reading your exchange with OC that you're not planning to take on Google search with Bloom. However what I think the commenter you're replying to is suggesting is that by calling yourself an open source 'Google' you're giving people the false impression that you are focused on search because when people think of Google the first thing they think of is search.
Perhaps you might consider something like free and open source 'Google Suite' or 'Google Apps' instead?
SearX is a meta-search engine, which means it isn't truly its own search engine. Still useful and open-source. I'd actually recommend the Bloom people to host their own SearX instance to cover search needs.
I want to move my radio station away from google so badly, and if you can add email hosting, even just a pop server I can start pointing my new address to you. As it is, I want to sign up without having to use another service (which is going to be google, let's face it) and it would be great to have this all stored in one place.
Honestly, even without the search function, I think this is one of the most base level functions of Google's toolkit. Everything else is just convenient
> and because an open source search engine will be tricked by all kind of nasty SEO Experts and it will be very hard to promote actually good Content.
FWIW I suspect that would be the opposite, because if it was free software then you would end up with many forks of the code that decides how to prioritize results, which would multiply the effort required by SEO spammers to target you. Meanwhile you would start with far fewer users and be that much less of a worthwhile target for that reason. And by the time you're big enough to be worth targeting, you have the resources to spend addressing it.
I think one of the reasons, is that people interested in agriculture are not the startup-geek who think scalability first but rather people more interested in collaboration and little community projects.
if i'd think that we have enough alternative search options, i'd have ignored this topic completely. i clicked because i disagree, because we do need more search options.
that said, we desperately need what bloom provides too. i just would not have recognized it from that title.
Not sure what kind of money you got, but for me S3-storage costs about 0.6USD/30GB*month. Multiply this by 100 and you got a bill of 60USD/month - which is not much if you are a cash-bloated startup but not really sustainable for a bootstrapped, non-exponential (that's the point when you're talking about challenges like climate change. stop growing) business, which want's to survive on user donations, once you reach several thousand users. If you got the really cheap stuff from online.net, I recommend you don't raise any hopes in Google-scale availability...
In france you have OVH - the invest heavily in solar energy and build datacenters with low energy consumption in mind. That might be a better choice (not working for them).
OP should talk to Octave Klaba who is very approachable and a big supporter of the FOSS spirit. maybe he can cut you a good price. I'd certainly try him (add him on LinkedIn and pitch it ... or oles at ovh.net )
I'm a programmer and geek myself, and heck, even toyed with the idea of having open-source alternative to GSuite. But reading the title I too thought it's an alternative to Google search. Reading your first para cleared it up though. Just a heads up.
great project. But one question, why would you link paul grahams article and then use Rust and not Lisp? I failed to see the connection there, but it made me really interested in trying to learn more about Lips (and maybe Rust)
> When I think Google I think "search" first and foremost, and I didn't see a search demo or anything.
I was expecting something related to search as well. This project is about the Google applications, though. That's ambitious and a great thing! I wish the devs the best of luck!
Sadly, though, I don't use those sorts of online apps and so I'm not in the target market.
As a potential early adopter that has seen countless would-be world-changing technology efforts come and go, in order to personally get me on the bandwagon, it would help to know a few things that didn't stand out to me at first, even after visiting the https://bloom.sh website.
(1) When I think Google I think "search" first and foremost, and I didn't see a search demo or anything. I think your average visitor is going to be thinking the same. If you're not involved in search, then branding yourself up as a Google alternative seems a bit off.
(2) How do you intend to sustain the project? Funding, grants, donations, paid plans, etc. More light on the team behind it as well perhaps, their incentives, skills, etc. I want to know that you have a reasonable chance of existing long enough to grind Google to the ground. :)
(3) A past version of myself would like to know more about "What's in it for me, like right now"? Saving the planet is all well and good, but I was a selfish short-term thinker.
(4) A future version of myself would like to know (assuming points (2) and (3) are answered to satisfaction) more about what I can do for you, but just in small ways, i.e. I don't/won't have the time to help with an iOS app. Practically speaking, this may just mean placing your donation links or "Subscribe for updates" buttons somewhere more prominent. I know some of this is included in your peer comment here on HN, so speaking about the websites only.
Anyway, good on you for releasing, and good luck! I'll be following the project!