Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 332 posts

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?

#41

Post by charcircuit »

3825 wrote: post #28
amelius wrote: post #19

Because nobody is writing good benchmarks for search engines. You can't improve something if you can't see what you're doing.

I find it interesting that you mention the word benchmark because reviewers used to rely on benchmarks for new phones and such but then iirc at least OnePlus and Samsung devices have been caught and banned from multiple benchmarks.

Banning them is silly. The benchmark programs reported unthrottled speeds, but when the phone has per app throttling (to save battery) you may not get the speed you measured in each app.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?

#42

Post by indymike »

> Apart from Google's monopoly and the big technical challenges, what would a competitor need to defy Google?

Which monopoly? Email? Search?

Regardless, the answer is time. It took Google a decade to win the search war completely. It will take a competitor time to dethrone Google.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?

#43

Post by karaterobot »

> Despite all the posts about the declining quality of Google

We assume people in general are dissatisfied with Google, because there are blog posts about it, and some people on HN agree, and because we have certain strongly held beliefs and technical knowledge that lead us to this conclusion. What we have not validated is whether people outside the tech community are as dissatisfied as we are. If they aren't willing to switch, then there won't be a notable competitor to Google.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?

#44

Post by charcircuit »

junon wrote: post #15
resoluteteeth wrote: post #10

Because google's search engine is still better than all of its current competitors and the barriers to entry are extremely high.

It used to be, at least. As years pass, Google's search quality deteriorates. It's been quite dramatic in the last few years especially - I won't pretend to know why. A lot of it started happening when they took away the ability to search for exact terms, etc.

>when they took away the ability to search for exact terms

You can still do this. Put quotes around the terms.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?

#45

Post by lettergram »

DuckDuckGo just ended their value proposition:

https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1501716484761997318

Not that there are many great alternatives, but the whole point of a SEARCH ENGINE is not censoring results. I understand ranking makes it searchable, but omitting views / results based on politics is self-reinforcing and makes anyone using the service blind to views and in a sense reality.

I think search can’t really be “improved” until it’s decentralized and uncensored. The quality decline IMO has to do with the social networks and “trusted news sources”, which I also think is a walled garden limiting accuracy of info.

See “trusted news initiative”: https://www.bbc.com/beyondfakenews/trusted-news-initiative/

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?

#46

Post by junon »

charcircuit wrote: post #44
junon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It used to be, at least. As years pass, Google's search quality deteriorates. It's been quite dramatic in the last few years especially - I won't pretend to know why. A lot of it started happening when they took away the ability to search for exact terms, etc.

>when they took away the ability to search for exact terms You can still do this. Put quotes around the terms.

This doesn't work like it used to.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?

#47

Post by grog454 »

jasode wrote: post #14

>, what would a competitor need to defy Google? One thing a competitor needs is a new and innovative technical algorithm . Back in 1998, Google's PageRank was an innovative algorithm that calculated relevance based on counting back links instead of parsing the word counts in embedded HTML text like other search engines. This created a noticeable improvement in quality of results. Nobody seems to have The Next Big Ide…

> counting back links

Do the algorithms weight links based on visibility or relevance? A link at the top of a sorted content site HN should probably be worth more than one at the bottom, and one buried in invisible metadata somewhere should be worth 0.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?

#48

Post by GuB-42 »

limeblack wrote: post #7

Bing is becoming fairly popular in the US https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/deskto...

Microsoft is pushing extremely hard for it. In Windows if you miss a barely visible button you will find yourself switching to Edge and Bing without realizing it.

That Google is still at 85% show that people really want to use Google, it is not just "whatever comes with the computer".

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?

#49

Post by dylan604 »

karaterobot wrote: post #43

> Despite all the posts about the declining quality of Google We assume people in general are dissatisfied with Google, because there are blog posts about it, and some people on HN agree, and because we have certain strongly held beliefs and technical knowledge that lead us to this conclusion. What we have not validated is whether people outside the tech community are as dissatisfied as we are. If they aren't willing…

No, I don't buy that at all. There are way more factors that play in to this. To me, the biggest one is humans just are lazy. In face of factual evidence, people continue to ignore it. This plays out in many different facets.

We know that Big Tobacco maniuplates their formulas to make things unnaturally addicting and are incredibly bad for people's health. People continue to smoke.

We know that processed foods are just not healthy for people, yet because of it's readily being available and cheap prices, people continue to eat it.

We know that the Earth is not flat, but people continue to believe that it is.

Just having the knowledge that [Google|Facebook|TikTok|$socialMediaPlatform] is manipulating what you see/read/consume in ways that benefit them and at times is actively harmful to the users doesn't mean people will stop.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?

#50

Post by celdon25 »

My opinion hasn’t changed much since writing this (just disregard the blockchain commentary at the end):

https://www.quora.com/Is-it-possible-to-beat-Google/answer/M...

A few competitors such as you.com are in the works. I think there’s a lot of potential, but the ranking algorithm is going to need to be decentralized (aka user-configurable) in some way. This configuration would also need to be sharable, maybe something akin to an App Store, because not all users can be asked to be technical enough to configure everything.

There is an enormous amount of wasted value stemming from the disconnect between what Google thinks the user wants to see, and what the user actually wants to see.

If I had to guess why this happened, I’m betting that Google and others had a notion that AI and other advances could eventually approximate a user’s needs to a degree that would keep up with the demand. But the monopoly set in and there was no longer an incentive to innovate that far. I’m sure Google tried, but not to a degree that would have happened if the competition had really stepped it up, or even existed. However, I’m sure by now there’s less optimism that the above effort is even a solvable problem, or one worth solving. One-size-fits-all is extremely suboptimal, but that paradigm is Google at its core. Without a paradigm shift, it’s diminishing returns all the way.

What Google is good at, however, is monetizing what they do have. If you’re trying to challenge them in the monetization game, with the same business model competing for the same customers (advertisers), you most certainly will lose. Seriously, don’t do that. Get to unicorn status first.

Focus on the tech, make sure the business model isn’t competing with the giants, and say no to any buyout offer from Big Tech.

Post reply on HN