Could this replace Google, Yahoo and MSN?

Some heavy hitters in the world of Internet Marketing will likely read this post and laugh at all of us mediocre dreamers as they continue to roll their wheelbarrel of deposits down the street to their local bank.

Maybe one of them, however, will stop and think and take up the challenge. He could hire a small group of programmers and 1000 computer sign-ups with money out of his own pocket to develop a proof-of-concept on a small scale. This can then be taken to the next level of development and so on. In 5 years, it can be a working model. It would literally sell itself. The gateway could be on a single server farm that doubles as an ISP wherein a member would only have to pay monthly connection costs (which we do anyway). That, and advertising themselves inside the system, is how the developers can get their money back and earn a profit that makes it all worthwhile.

It isn't hard...it just has to be believed in (ie, a market has to be there waiting at the other end. The technology and software is already out there)

heh... for how long?

I mean, before smart "bad guys" understand how to bend and abuse the technology to their
benefit and profit?

The intention sounds honorable, but the article is far too technical for me to understand
much of it...

For the little I understand having read only the first page of 4, I see some immediate safety
concerns that should be addressed (and probably are) before such a system could work
with, or in place of, the current technologies. From the article you linked:

> An alternative peer-to-peer domain name system that bypasses ICANN and Verisign, is completely decentralized...
> A Web where every peer can automatically start a web server, host an XML-RPC service, and more, and quickly make these available to other peers.

Just these two things sound like crooks could set up content, which can then be made
easily available to other crooks, while making it very difficult for law enforcement to track
them down...

Sometimes a slower centralized system, albeit with its limits, can be more helpful to the
good of a society more than a free-for-all super fast system that promises so many good
things while overlooking the darker aspects of using and abusing new technologies...

And this comes from someone (me) who is well versed in conspiracy theories, government
control, lies and propaganda and all that kind of stuff... regardless of all that, often times a
controlled, secure, slow "trackable" system can be less harmful than a super-duper P2P
free-for-all (and so forth) new technology...

Of course I'm playing devil's advocate (all heil new technologies, I love change and think
that evolving is much smarter than opposing new ideas), but I figured it made sense to add
this view, expressed in a reasonable fashion, to the thread

Having said this, it would be very good to see an alternative to Google especially, since
it's been building a sort of monopoly on search results... well, not a monopoly as such,
but a definite dominance in the search engines market... which, regardless of how well
the PR is managed in Google (making it look like the Gentle Giant), it's still not good for
customers and end users... or at least not the best situation...in my opinion...

Competition between providers is always better for the end user, and the same applies
in the search engine world, so I welcome and encourage any viable or possible alternative...

Ok, so the second part of the post seems to be contradicting the first... but in fact it's
not: the two views can go hand in hand, welcoming new technologies without forgetting
though the advantages of apparently less performing older (but maybe safer) technologies.
And on top of that I'm a complicated person with a complicated view on things... lol

ciao,
Saul

If they do, I'll tell God!