(2003-12-17) Bray Search Wrapup

Tim Bray closes his Search Engine series, giving a spec for an Open Source WebApp engine, etc. My heartfelt apologies to anyone still trying to make a go of it in server-side search; but that business is just so over. It always was a lousy business, nobody has ever made real money there on a sustained basis, and yet it's something that every Web deployment needs. For a substantial site you can easily drop six figures for a Search Engine, and all the bells and whistles that buys you are mostly not cost-effective. So BRF is going to be Open Source. That doesn't mean that you can't make money with search software; it just means you have to do it in services.