111–120 of 332 posts
Bing isn't the perfect google replacement as it seems to have gone the google route of not returning hits for things you search for, but for things it thinks you wanted to search for.
Maybe the "site:reddit.com" hack works well enough for people who care about search results.
Speed of access, an Internet browsing engine , contracts with non-GGL browsers, cloud data centers, maps/locations/navigation, fiber cables/internet pipelines, social networks and personal management software, AI/ML research, personal devices OS ...
Impossible is nothing, but any incumbent will likely take in capital linked to Google. GGL is dominant across the world's hundred and something countries. Excpect places where it is banned(China) or shunned(Russia), anywhere it is equivalent to a monopoly of internet services.
From a technical perspective, a challenger can rise up. From an economic standpoint, a challenger would not last long (maybe locally if favored by regulation). Even the most successfull others: Apple or Amazon would not dare take on Google's Ads or Search Engine. Microsoft tried with Windows Phones and Bing, then ended failing to dominate the market. Google is not singular business. It has so many tentacles in the tech sector that wave a web of interlocking tech products. Growth numbers in Search are boosted by integration in all of Google's own products and the rest of internet users and companies.
To answer your question is to figure out what advantage it has on any competitor starting from zero... Sadly, its network scale is too large to allow an equal challenger.
Ultimately 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 your post is key. I would be interested in anyone posting what they think is an economically viable path to challenging Google. Pretty much the one company that has done it at scale (Microsoft) isn't exactly eating Google's lunch (though I think there are a few areas that Bing is better). It would just take at astronomical amount of capital to challenge Google at generic Internet search, and the few organizat…
I understand your intent with that domain-specific example but surprisingly, that reasonable intuition sometimes doesn't work...
E.g. for Amazon product search, I often deliberately use Google's engine to find the Amazon page because Amazon's own search can't do it. See example screenshots in my previous comment about that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27539199
* Google (and all of FAANG) have a stupid high percentage of the worker pool.
* Google's biggest asset is that they are Google. Kind of like competing with Coke. Intrinsic quality of what they do is kind of irrelevant.
* General lack of value in most things internet. Google is getting a lot of value out of what they do, but they are having to put stupid levels of manpower into squeezing out that value.Ultimately 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 your post is key. I would be interested in anyone posting what they think is an economically viable path to challenging Google. Pretty much the one company that has done it at scale (Microsoft) isn't exactly eating Google's lunch (though I think there are a few areas that Bing is better). It would just take at astronomical amount of capital to challenge Google at generic Internet search, and the few organizat…
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 someth…
Results being what Google wants the user to see seems to be the real problem.
Youtube for example in the past would show suggestions from small channels that were interesting and fun, but now you can't even find them in search using an exact video title. I've seen Google News completely shut out a breaking news story for half a day and the only reason I can think of was the ranking AI saw some 'bad' words in every story - even from NYT/WaPo, whose articles were among the many dozens on Bing News. Presumably they've applied their anti-"I hated it" ideas to Search as well.
So now is a great time to compete with Google because they're handicapping themselves and even though they could just turn off the bias and return good results, they probably would rather lose than stop trying to influence users.
Everyone complaining about google’s “declining quality” is living in some fantasy world where there’s something better to compare google to. Its results are significantly better than any competitor, check for yourself. If you think you can do better, go for it.
“declining quality” means current google vs past google, not other search engines
It's 2022, and Google search is just as shitty as their GDrive search.