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The world needs more search engines

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191–200 of 549 posts

Re: The world needs more search engines

#191

> There are only very few truly independent search engines in the world. Google, Bing, Yandex, and Baidu are the best known ones. Most other players only white label results from those four and are dependent on them and their business model. Does this mean the article is insinuating that DuckDuckGo is dependent on another search engine? Is this true? Or are DDG results organic?

DDG primarily relies on Bing for its search ads.

I wouldn't be surprised if it is the primary source of their search results either.

Developing a new search engine from scratch that can compete with Google is almost impossible unless you are at the scale of Microsoft.

It is much easier to white label an existing search engine so you can have good search results on day one.

Re: The world needs more search engines

#192
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Google must not fall because it is a monopoly. If it was to fall it should be because someone built a better product. One of the reasons for breaking up monopolies is that they make it harder for newcomers to build something better.

Even if you break up Google or Alphabet, the search division would probably remain a single company. It won't solve anything. So You get Google Search Inc. Adsense Inc. AdWords Inc, Gmail Inc, I imagine. This would be just restructuring, Googlers are too smart to get hold back by this and they probably already have an emergency plan if it remotely comes as a possibility.

If Google search is not funded by ads any more, they’ll suddenly have a serious problem.

Re: The world needs more search engines

#193
post #71

It’s really sad to see the anti-success rhetoric. I was around during the “search wars”, and what’s usually forgotten is that well, they were by far the best behaved as a corporate entity. This “romantization” of this ideal state, devoid of historical context or acknowledgement of the world we live in is extremwly counter productive. Should google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple do better? Absofuckinglutely!!! Regulate them…

Your post and post history is a great illustration of what I've talked about before here on ycombinator.

Lots of your posts I can agree with, you're a reasonable individual. so why the huge blind spot when it comes to this topic?

When they colluded to force wages down, you defended them. There is absolutely no need for you to. And yet I know you will not stop even after this comment to you.

For what purpose have you written this abolute garbage bag of neoliberal-strung-together-with-gum-and-baling wire comment?

Your post has far too many platitudes and half-ideas and gobbledeygook. "anti success rhetoric"? how bout I classify your post in 3 words too? "Corporate apologist rhetoric"

not a single. sentence. has merit. it reads like ad copy or a poorly programmed bot.

You even put air quotes on "freedom" I mean, come. ON.

I try not to make too big a habit of calling people out, because that leads to poor commenting quality on my end but you sir have put a really, really bad comment on display.

I invite others to read each sentence, one by one, and see if they even follow.

Do they?

They do not.

They read like someone who wants to defend google and just threw up a bunch of worthless words in order to confuse.

Now I already suspect your reasons, but perhaps you can enlighten me and the others here how I could possibly take your opinion seriously?

Re: The world needs more search engines

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they were by far the best behaved as a corporate entity Were. When though? The founders said in their original university paper that selling advertising was wrong and would inherently corrupt a search engine. Of course once they realised how much money was being made in search, that fundamental tenet of don't be evil lapsed before the phrase was even coined. History and Google's progress of updates seems to have bo…

> Scanning the world's books was a far more appealing proposition. That proposition failed precisely because it was regarded - rightly or wrongly, it's not clear that it matters - as a "far too large, far too greedy, and far too abusive" endeavor.

I thought it was more that the necessary licensing fell through, or was agreed and then fell apart. Added to which the Google Books interface was and is dire.

Re: The world needs more search engines

#195
post #166

How do you design regulation that holds the giants accountable, doesn't impair smaller companies' ability to enter/innovate in the space, and isn't quickly corruptible by the (well-resourced) companies you are trying to control? We're better served by breaking them up and enforcing and strengthening the pro-competition laws on the books. The government has a pretty mixed record with regulating industry, and a far mor…

What is the corporate abuse here that necessitates a breakup?

Google/Facebook/Amazon have been acting anti-competitively for quite a while. Vertical integration, concentrating industry through M&A, shady data practices.

A democratic country has an interest in ensuring that our labor and goods markets also remain open, competitive, and democratic in nature. We've made this choice as a country repeatedly throughout our history, and it's time to do it again.

Re: The world needs more search engines

#196
the problem is, I might have no reason to trust Google but I trust software like Cliqz even less, even though they tell me, that I should trust them (maybe because of this).

Also Cliqz belongs to Hubert Burda Media, a company which I trust even less.

Re: The world needs more search engines

#197
LOL @ several accounts of people who work at this company selectively responding positively but ONLY to those who are already on the “Google = bad” bandwagon.

I’m extremely disappointed in the HN discussion here. The blog post is by someone wanting to compete with Google. Great. The entirety of the post makes ZERO compelling arguments about what features, guarantees, or outcomes their product will provide. In the last couple paragraphs, they mention the word privacy - okay but how so? What’s the business model? Why should I trust you?

The blog post is nothing more than an attack on Google (and other tech companies, but that comes later in the article). That’s the only “substance”.

There’s no question that key regulation is missing in the space. But what exactly is Google even doing that is anti consumer and killing competition? What anti trust laws have they broken? Should we identify them or maybe determine what is missing in our legal framework? If the author wants to compete with Google, perhaps they can share that insight. That be productive.

>Google is Cambridge Analytica on steroids.

That’s a pretty damning statement and unproductive. You want to make an emotional argument and have keyboard activists work for YOU instead of sticking to objective facts.

Disappointing this is #1 on the front page. We are turning HN into Reddit.

Re: The world needs more search engines

#198
post #3

Absolutely love this quote from the article: > Paraphrasing Monty Python: “What has Google ever done for us?”. They have done an awful lot for society, for the web and probably saved it a few times a long time ago. But it is time to also see them as the empire they have become. And empires must fall. I think people generally do not understand well enough the far-fetched consequences of a monopoly in the search busine…

> We really need more diversity and competition in this space, not just for quality of results and convenience of services; but for society as a whole.

There are plenty of alternatives. But people don't use them as much because they are worse.

Consider Bing ( http://www.bing.com/ ). It is backed by a company even bigger than Google. MSFT's market cap is 1.155T; Google's is 899B. MSFT is 30% bigger than Google. Why haven't they put more resources on their Bing search engine? Spend a few billion dollars, hire away some of the top search engine experts from Google, and build away!

Re: The world needs more search engines

#200

Some feedbacks about the product. I made some typical searches I do in my job. They returned reasonable results. Impossible to know if they are better or worse than Google. I need some days of usage. I'll do my best to keep using it this week. Maybe autodecting the language would help. It gave me a German page without any obvious way to change to English. I went to the settings, changed the language and discovered th…

Many thanks for the feedback. We'll add the language autodetection for the interface and results this week. There is no profiling taking place. The country is just to select what index you would like results from - we'll try to make the UI better.

This is still beta, so please keep on using it and we'd love to hear more feedback [beta@cliqz.com].

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