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

171–180 of 332 posts

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

#171

Post by antli35 »

mgkimsal wrote: post #142
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…

"next big idea" is probably "selectable algorithms". Create 3-5 different search algorithms, with names and understandable characteristics, then let me choose which one when searching. You may have some algorithm that prioritizes recency, or rapid changes, or more interaction, and others that prioritize longevity, citations/links, others that prioritize that type of information - prioritize regional or noteworthy eve…

This could be a niche search engine for advanced users, but I feel that to average users this would be a strictly worse experience because they have no interest in figuring out how to "select an algorithm." They expect to type a query and the result they want comes up at the top. The search engine should be able to infer whether the user wants results that are more recent, more interactive, more authoritative, etc. based on the query, past search behavior, and anything else that is known about the user. If that isn't happening, the search engine needs to be made "smarter."

The way it's likely seen by many tech companies is that the more decisions you have to offload to the user, the less advanced your system is. An old car with a lot of knobs and dials and levers is not more advanced than a self-driving car with a single control, select destination. Some people will still prefer the old car, but it will be a niche market.

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

#172

Post by stingraycharles »

nobodyandproud wrote: post #167
samwillis wrote: post #89

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…

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.

Isn’t Algolia pretty much eating this market?

They seem to be very dominant on the problem of “here’s my dataset, please provide me with an api / interface to search it”

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

#173

Post by imglorp »

mgkimsal wrote: post #142
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…

"next big idea" is probably "selectable algorithms". Create 3-5 different search algorithms, with names and understandable characteristics, then let me choose which one when searching. You may have some algorithm that prioritizes recency, or rapid changes, or more interaction, and others that prioritize longevity, citations/links, others that prioritize that type of information - prioritize regional or noteworthy eve…

> Image search still has a long way to go, IME.

Try images.yandex.com: it's vastly better than most others. It's not too good at identifying specific people but it will find prior exact uses of an image (like TinEye) but is especially very good at abstracting what's the abstract subject, color, pose, setting etc in a photo and show you similar.

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

#174

Post by mgkimsal »

antli35 wrote: post #171
mgkimsal wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"next big idea" is probably "selectable algorithms". Create 3-5 different search algorithms, with names and understandable characteristics, then let me choose which one when searching. You may have some algorithm that prioritizes recency, or rapid changes, or more interaction, and others that prioritize longevity, citations/links, others that prioritize that type of information - prioritize regional or noteworthy eve…

This could be a niche search engine for advanced users, but I feel that to average users this would be a strictly worse experience because they have no interest in figuring out how to "select an algorithm." They expect to type a query and the result they want comes up at the top. The search engine should be able to infer whether the user wants results that are more recent, more interactive, more authoritative, etc. b…

3 big buttons at the top after search results

"You're viewing through FOOBAR lens. Click here to view results from another lens".

Doesn't have to be that complicated.

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

#175

Post by cryptica »

No Google alternative will be able to raise funding because top VCs own Google stock and they have no interest in seeing their Google shares lose value.

Secondly, the media would not allow it because many top media executives own Google shares. If a better Google competitor came along, media companies would do everything to suppress information about it so that nobody would know it exists.

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

#176

Post by productceo »

Google Search enjoys multiple economies of scale. To list several:

1. Data about what the population is interested: More people use Google today, giving Google more data to train its AI with.

2. Server capacity: It's cheaper for Google to store 1 image than for me to store 1 image, because it stores many more images. Same for compute, such as training AI. Google can get one A100 GPU cheaper than I can.

3. Ads: If I had the exact same search quality and even the exact same number of users, Google will make more money from the same operation, because it has more advertisers.

They set up their business well!

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

#177

Post by stingraycharles »

antli35 wrote: post #171
mgkimsal wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"next big idea" is probably "selectable algorithms". Create 3-5 different search algorithms, with names and understandable characteristics, then let me choose which one when searching. You may have some algorithm that prioritizes recency, or rapid changes, or more interaction, and others that prioritize longevity, citations/links, others that prioritize that type of information - prioritize regional or noteworthy eve…

This could be a niche search engine for advanced users, but I feel that to average users this would be a strictly worse experience because they have no interest in figuring out how to "select an algorithm." They expect to type a query and the result they want comes up at the top. The search engine should be able to infer whether the user wants results that are more recent, more interactive, more authoritative, etc. b…

I agree, it’s the classic example of “people don’t really like choice”. When you are presented with the option of a search algo, there’s always this feeling that you chose wrong. It’s an additional thing to think about, and makes things more complicated.

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

#178

Post by grumpopotamus »

I never see this one mentioned: Google crawls the web at a high rate and is able to index new content rapidly. This is possible because every site lets googlebot through. But if you are not already an established search engine everyone will throttle your crawler, and you will have no chance to compete with Google on keeping up with the latest content.

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

#179

Post by randomsilence »

sanderjd wrote: post #163

I've been using Neeva, it works well.

That's funny:

Their slogan:

>try Neeva, 100% ad-free search engine, Totally private

Their founders:

>Neeva was founded by Sridhar Ramaswamy (ex-SVP of Ads at Google) and Vivek Raghunathan (ex-VP of Monetization at YouTube). They met in the early days of search ads at Google, and came up with the idea for Neeva over hikes and coffee.

They have founded a company that explicitly doesn't need the knowledge that they had acquired in their job.

[1] https://neeva.com/about

Post reply on HN