it’s no longer enough to organize the world’s information. It becomes important to organize the world’s trustworthy information.

the websites at the top of Google are not necessarily the highest-quality ones, but rather the ones that put the most effort into SEO.

The problem, now so drastically different from a decade ago, is not what to read/buy/eat/watch/etc., but figuring out the best thing to read/buy/eat/watch/etc. with my limited time and attention.

protection of privacy is not a compelling enough reason to leave Google. For the vast majority of people, allowing them to “control their own data” is not a selling point, especially if it requires paying for something they’re used to getting for free.

the opportunity in search is not to attack Google head-on with a massive, one-size-fits-all horizontal aggregator, but instead to build boutique search engines that index, curate, and organize things in new ways.

These entertainment giants offer curation that demands our attention, but they don’t offer curation on demand. The opportunity is in moving curated content feeds away from their never-ending-now orientation and toward more goal-oriented interfaces.

All curation grows until it requires search, and all search grows until it requires curation.

—Ben Evans

boutique search engines feel less like the Yellow Pages and more like texting your friends to ask for a recommendation.

The line between curator, compiler, and cataloguer is thin and there is a natural invisible asymptote — diminishing returns on more data over time.

With today’s subscription models, customers have no real incentive to help the platform grow. Nascent token-based business models show early signs of promise. By giving ownership to stakeholders and allowing subscribers to benefit from future upside, startups can overcome the cold start problem.

We need more interfaces with a point of view on what information is missing, how it needs to be organized, and at what point of the value chain the curation has to happen.