Have you tried Brave Search? It’s not 100% yet but it’s better for many searches. I made it my default and only use Google as secondary now.
Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
191–200 of 332 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their Android browser is great. It kills ads and floating videos, and has excellent features. However I just can't rely on the search results. It's rare for me to get a decent result for a search so I switch between chrome. I'm not sure why because I thought DDG used Google search.
DDG uses Bing (like most other alternative search engines). I believe Brave's new search engine uses its own index though.
Exactly, they use their own index, which AFAIK can be seeded by other search engine results. Here's an overview: https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/4409406835469-Wh...
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#193I wonder how much of the declining search quality can be attributed to the rise of walled gardens and social networks. It probably was a lot easier to index blogs and personal websites back in the day vs. TikTok/Snapchat/etc.. today. It's ironic that Google itself directly contributed to this.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#194Ultimately I think it’s because the internet is just too big! Google were only able to do it because they had the right algorithm early in the age of the internet. They were then able to grow with it to achieve the scale required. Starting from scratch now on a general internet search engine would be close to impossible without 10s, if not 100s, billions of investment. And you would need that to build the index befor…
`We almost need an “Open Search Co-Op” which smaller search engines can join to share technology and refers users to each other.`
Can you elaborate?
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#195No one is going to beat Google at their game. But the game will change. And Google is unlikely to win the next one, if past similar examples can teach anything.
There will be a dramatic change in how people ask questions and access information.
Maybe it will be personal assistants. I doubt it.
Perhaps these kinds of Neuralink implants? Could be...
Whoever nails it, will be one of the near-future trillionaires.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#196The internet is too different now to what Google (or any SE) was designed to index.
Too much of the up-to-date high value information is posted onto semi-public channels. Like facebook groups, instagram posts, telegram channels, etc.
At the same time, too much of the publicly available websites are becoming clickbait and mindless marketing drivel.
Just try to research anything slightly obscure that has to be up-to-date information (from the last few years).
Like "how to get from Nairobi to Kisumu by bus". Google maps doesn't have this (not surprisingly), but what about the SERPs? Nothing there. 90% of the results are useless bus ticket sale websites that have no info, just SEO. (You can't buy this ticket online anyway).
Is Kenya just such an off-the-map destination that no backpacker has ever written about taking this route? No!
The information is out there. You'll find it inside the related facebook groups for travelers in east Africa. And if not? That's where you'll ask. But the answer? It'll never reach a SERP in the future.
Even more sad, is that if you keep looking on Google, you may find buried results from years ago. From travel forums and such. What's sad is that the info will be 10 years old, since no one uses public forums anymore. (Unless it's on reddit, pretty much the last public forum with any reach).
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#197Google pays Apple ~$10bn a year to be the default search engine on Apple devices. They pay Mozilla a significant percentage of Mozilla's revenue to be the default in Firefox. Obviously Google is the default in Chrome. You can't compete with that by building a better search engine. Even if you had the infrastructure, capital, and you offered Apple and Mozilla more money than they get from Google, Google could beat you…
Duckduckgo wrote about this a decade ago. So much investment needed to just get on their list of search engines.
Meanwhile on Android, there's no practical way to completely move towards ddg for searched info unless you basically get rid of some voice and search features.
Without laws, Google set up an ecology of everything search related hits google one way or another. On Apple there are ways around it because Apple isn't a search company.
Having said that......... Most people don't care. It's why Microsoft pushes so hard for ie. Because they get to set the default which nobody will change.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#198Kagi keeps showing up here, perhaps check that out. https://kagi.com/
I can't figure out what their business model is. Do you know?
https://kagi.com/faq
How much will Kagi cost?
Kagi will be completely free during the beta-test period for all users. Once we officially launch, we are dedicated to providing the best possible search experience to our users at a reasonable price. We plan to offer entry level plans for as low as $10/month, unlimited plan at around $20-$30/mo as well as have bundles (to include Kagi email and other services), organization/team plans, family plans and annual payment discounts available.
We understand that for some user this may sound prohibitively expensive, but unfortunately we are not in the position to set the price point by consensus or market expectation, but by realistic cost of providing the service at a given level of quality in a way that potentially ensures sustainability and serving our customers long-term.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#199Ultimately I think it’s because the internet is just too big! Google were only able to do it because they had the right algorithm early in the age of the internet. They were then able to grow with it to achieve the scale required. Starting from scratch now on a general internet search engine would be close to impossible without 10s, if not 100s, billions of investment. And you would need that to build the index befor…
I think are right but not because of the size of the internet. Although the web has grown, the cost of computing and bandwidth has decreased and there’s a lot of open tools, technologies, and open datasets like YaCy and Common Crawl. The data you would want to index is a tiny fraction of the total internet.
The challenge comes from the massive investments in turning that data into a good search engine and cutting through spam. That is the investment I think Google has scaled over time. Secondly, mind share; the moat Google has is immense, although I think DuckDuckGo and Bing has shown given enough time it is possible to get mindshare slowly; though if anything this demonstrates the challenge.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#200The thing that replaces Google won't look like Google at first. This makes it hard to predict who will dethrone them. In the past we use to say how do you beat Microsoft? Or why isn't there a Microsoft competitor (besides Apple etc...). Now we have Google and chromebooks and android. That's a big step beyond a search engine and competitive w/ MSFT. Amazon basically owns cloud computing. Arguably there are competitors in different markets. These challenges to MSFT happened due to the massive force of the Internet which basically reduced consumer costs by transferring it to advertisers.
If we are talking about search then it will likely be something AI based probably operating under a different model than Google search. AI is a huge force probably akin to the Internet.