But, even in those early days of the 90s, it was known that there was no way for a search engine to be able to index an exponentially increasing amount of data.
And then lots of people did just that for 2 decades.
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this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2025
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I like the webring idea but I would hope finding the right server would be automated, clicking through thousands of servers sounds exhausting.
I like the webring idea
Really? It wasn't even really even popular when it was popular. Search engines quickly became a better way to find things. webrings were always broken.
The details are in the work, but there is consideration for enabling a preference to automatically select the fastest server.
I've also considered making servers announce load reports, telling other servers how much load they are under, that way a server can be selected via both fastest and least under-load.
This might even be an appropriate use for AI (maybe even running in-browser for privacy). I imagine something that reads your prompt and auto-populates a few rings to search. You review and edit the suggested rings, then click search.
no one can index exponential amounts of data, nevermind the predatory SEO and AI.
Google is. The NSA almost undoubtedly is. A bunch of other governments are. AI companies probably are. Meta probably is.
When a user wants to search something up, they first search for a topic in web-rings, and then they select that web-ring.
From a usability perspective, that doesn't feel great. How does a user find the first web ring search engine? What if they don't want that multi step process? How do users avoid predatory web rings that are trying to sell them stuff? How does this compete with existing search?