Hacker News: PingCohttps://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=PingCoHacker News RSShttps://hnrss.org/hnrss v2.1.1Fri, 17 Apr 2026 09:42:12 +0000<![CDATA[Ask HN: What funding models exist for a search engine?]]>Let's say I wanted to build a web scraper + search engine product that did not feature ads at all. What other funding models exist? How viable are they?

In particular, what if you sold anonymized data about trends/insights into consumer behavior to other businesses? At scale, is it conceivable that such a strategy would be profitable?

Under this model, the search results would be incentivized to be as accurate as possible. There would be incentives against influencing rankings to maximize profits (which differs from the classic display ads and the Google Ad Words models) because you would want your understanding of consumer behavior to be as untainted as possible.

Thoughts?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47767117

Points: 3

# Comments: 4

]]>Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:40:49 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47767117PingCohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47767117https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47767117<![CDATA[New comment by PingCo in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (March 2026)"]]>I'm so excited to begin work on a new pair of software products geared towards professionals. I have the domain names secured and I'm actively defining the product requirements. I'm also researching infrastructure/architecture questions. Obviously I'll make mistakes and have to move things around in the future, but I'm trying to get as much right initially as I can. I don't know when I'll be able to launch, but I would be very happy if it was some time before the end of the year!

]]>Sun, 15 Mar 2026 13:34:51 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47387237PingCohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47387237https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47387237