DMOZ gone!! The king is dead. Long live the king.

[rufo]

So it appears AOL have pulled the plug on DMOZ.  The reason why? - I suspect a financial decision somewhere along the road but personally I think it still had something to offer.   I realise there are mirrored versions of it online still (for how long - and for what reason - not much link juice in that) but to pull the plug on one of the oldest and most trusted directories is, well, rather final.

Amongst the rubble that litters the web - the endless paid entry directories and the self proclaimed ultimate listing portals I at least felt there was someone else out there (human) validating my submissions - even if it took some time to find my newest sites online.  We all know that links need to be adequately sourced but it was a resource I always began with on the quest in achieving ranking greatness.

Which begs the question - was it still as popular in the last couple of years or have I been chasing my own tail?
Will it be replaced?  Or have even human edited directories had their day?

I'd be interested to hear what others think.

RIP DMOZ

[rufo]

Hi Brett,

With content being more important now I appreciate DMOZ was a dying breed.  I also became frustrated with the lack of response from some of the editors - not much point in a human edited directory if it takes months to edit parts of it.  I should have thought about it but I just expected it to last a bit longer.

I can see what you mean regarding Machine learning.  I bought echo a few months back (mainly because Google Home isn't available in UK yet) but even with their AI you can see how search is becoming more intuitive. It's an obvious advancement and one that has far greater benefit in todays society.

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

[brettmandoes]

Hi Steven,

DMOZ and other sites like it are either gone or are nearly ghosts. This is relatable to the conversation on machine learning, where one group believes you can program AI to learn and another (smaller) group believes you have to program all human knowledge into an AI manually to create a true artificial intelligence. Machine learning works, it's efficient, and widely adopted by the rest of humanity. The other approach - one that requires a lot of endless heavy labor - has died off for obvious efficiency reasons (and it doesn't work).

DMOZ was owned by AOL, which was recently purchased by Verizon. I've no doubt Verizon pulled the plug because it was resources spent on a dinosaur that has no value. It was a precursor to modern search engines, but I don't think anyone was using it for its intended original design.

Truth of the matter is, companies that don't invest in machine learning when a competitor in their industry is are going to the grave. You just can't compete with that level of efficiency with human hands.