You are comparing google with other search engines but they are instead an ads monopoly. If someone else invests big on an ads marketplace, a search engine will spontaneously form around it
Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
161–170 of 332 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#162Google 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…
You could lobby the govs to require search engine selection in browsers / device on first install. I don't think that would change anything though. Google's results might be declining but they are still arguably better than their competitors and ATM at least the majority of people would still choose them.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#163I've been using Neeva, it works well.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#164I think the way you'd compete is unbundling it.
Building a general search engine better than Google is probably a non starter, but...
Could you build a better image search for graphic designers? Could you build a better search for specific document types, such as academic papers or legal precedence?
I think that's what we'll see - similar to how nothing replaced Craigslist, but a bunch of startups unbundled features in Craigslist and made companies around them.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#165>, 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…
Read an article which mentioned that Google degraded the search service because good results no longer made financial sense, perverse incentive is that it benefits them better for a customer to pay money for ads than provide a good search (meaning that competition for keywords is now the algorithm). The next innovation in search then necessarily must be to find a different funding model for the engine besides ads, ot…
That's ridiculous. Google's search dies if people stop using it. They stop using it if the results are poor. There are no perverse incentives here unless you believe Google is hoping to cash out tomorrow and close its doors.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
Okay, one example: Suppose you're a gamer - You could configure search results related to gaming to be limited to games you own, games you want, the subset of platforms or genres you care about, games your friends own, and so on. It wouldn't be a priority for most search companies to make something like that, but it would certainly provide some value for certain people. Decentralized configuration would allow for com…
I've been pretty stoked on you.com so far. I do like the ability to pick my search sources (apps). It would be cool to see search results for different genres/communities.
`see search results for different genres/communities`
Can you elaborate?
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#167Ultimately 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…
Another way is to add search for walled gardens: The most common by far are corporate documents and datastores.
It’s also a harder problem to solve than Google’s algorithm.
After two decades Microsoft seems to have brought in support, but they left the hard part to others.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#168Kagi keeps showing up here, perhaps check that out. https://kagi.com/
I can't figure out what their business model is. Do you know?
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#169Google 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…
You could beat them in a small segment market though. EG: A group tired of being banned by google.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#170Because I believe a search engine for the internet should be nationalized, like the internet itself.
Google "solved" the internet search engine problem. Other competitors are just replicating it poorly. There's nothing good for the consumer here.