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

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

#251

Post by shisisms »

technobabbler wrote: post #213
keyme wrote: post #196

The internet is too different now to what Google (or any SE) was designed to index. Too much of the up-to-date high value information is posted onto semi-public channels. Like facebook groups, instagram posts, telegram channels, etc. At the same time, too much of the publicly available websites are becoming clickbait and mindless marketing drivel. Just try to research anything slightly obscure that has to be up-to-da…

You know, if that were the only roadblock, I wish someone would take the top 10,000 Google queries and just manually curate them. Hire different interest groups -- outdoors, travel, cuisine, etc. -- and manually find the best hits buried deep in some subreddit. No fancy algorithms, just old-fashioned librarian-style research, but constantly updated with the latest findings and queries. Would happily pay for that... e…

The problem is, you probably won’t pay for it.

Google’s revenue per user in the US underlines that point, taking a credit card out for an annual subscription for a $100 probably isn’t going to score a good conversion rate for anything beyond a very small userbase.

The predicted economic/behavioural constraints are inhibiting innovation. You’re forced to play Google’s game.

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

#252

Post by 8bitsrule »

keyme wrote: post #196

The internet is too different now to what Google (or any SE) was designed to index. Too much of the up-to-date high value information is posted onto semi-public channels. Like facebook groups, instagram posts, telegram channels, etc. At the same time, too much of the publicly available websites are becoming clickbait and mindless marketing drivel. Just try to research anything slightly obscure that has to be up-to-da…

Your Nairobi question results in the top answer today on [https://millionshort.com/] It has some info, not sure how useful.

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

#253

Post by ls15 »

togaen wrote: post #76

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.

> Its results are significantly better than any competitor, check for yourself.

Maybe I don't have very high standards, or maybe it is the way I write search queries, but I almost only use DDG and the results are good enough for me. I just find what I am looking for. There usually is just no reason for me to use something else, so why would I want to put my privacy into the lion's cage?

The few times I landed on Google's result page during the last couple of years, I found the results more confusing than helpful. Maybe I unlearned how to use Google.

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

#254

Post by satellite2 »

Contrary to many posts here, I think that Google completely controls the quality of the results. The feeling is that quality has gone down because a lot of top ranked website are SEO ads filled websites. I think this is true and on purpose. Two years ago top results were very often Wikipedia, Stack overflow or reddit. Sending users to those websites is not profitable for Google.

I also think that's why it's very hard for competitors to compete. As soon as one is going to get credibly menacing they'll improve on the quality again to preserve their position.

I think that has happened with McDonald's for instance. A few years ago the quality was at it's lowest, the food definitely started to feel fake, air filled and not satisfying. Since the small local competition of hand crafted hamburger popped up a bit everywhere, and credible international competitors ramped up (5 guys, in n out...) they had to improve the quality. And my impression is that it's been a bit more than a year that the quality dramatically improved, and their hamburgers actually taste like food again.

I think it's simply the quality versus profits cursor and it can be adapted any time.

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

#256

Post by Closi »

schleck8 wrote: post #228
Method-X wrote: post #225

Brave Search [1] is the best alternative I’ve come across so far. They have this concept called “Goggles” [2] on their roadmap, which I think has incredible potential to disrupt the status quo. [1] https://search.brave.com [2] https://brave.com/static-assets/files/goggles.pdf

Brave Search is really impressive indeed. There is also Kagi https://kagi.com

Kagi is just showing google and bing results mixed together.

Also there is no actual path for them to be profitable (their pricing strategy isn’t viable imo) and they are currently loosing money on every search.

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

#257

Post by Closi »

omnicognate wrote: post #35

Because Google is the best you're going to get with ad-supported search. If you're willing to pay for search there is an alternative emerging: Kagi. It's not a Google competitor, though. It's a niche product for people (like me) who are willing to pay a significant amount of money for access to a search engine whose creators make money by providing value to their users rather than by providing their users to advertis…

Kagi’s pricing strategy is ridiculous. A single search can cost 5 cents in charges if I click through a few filters.

IMO Kagi can only appeal to people who care about search enough to pay and don’t search enough to make it too expensive, which is probably a contradiction.

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

#258

Post by oakpond »

polote wrote: post #248
keyme wrote: post #196

The internet is too different now to what Google (or any SE) was designed to index. Too much of the up-to-date high value information is posted onto semi-public channels. Like facebook groups, instagram posts, telegram channels, etc. At the same time, too much of the publicly available websites are becoming clickbait and mindless marketing drivel. Just try to research anything slightly obscure that has to be up-to-da…

> It'll never reach a SERP in the future. Why not ? A scrapper may not be able to find it, but we all have a Facebook account. You dont need an automated scrapper to create a search engine. Info can be manually curated or scrapped through web extensions

> but we all have a Facebook account.

Nah.

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

#259

Post by aghilmort »

tmh88j wrote: post #232
arrakis2021 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Whenever I search anything informative, I append “Reddit” to the phrase to get the top Reddit threads about the topic. Everything else in the SERPS is usually SEO trash

Is there a way to provide a date range when specifying a site? I frequently append reddit to my google searches as well, but the results often include outdated posts. I don't want restaurant/service/whatever reviews from 7+ years ago.

after:YYYY-MM-DD & before:YYYY-MM-DD work on Breeze, Google, & some others, e.g.,

- recent March Madness results; thread of examples, https://twitter.com/DotDotJames/status/1506826439961858052

- hot-off-the-press startup funding, https://twitter.com/DotDotJames/status/1504901028520640514

- new free trip contest announcements w/ query breakdown, https://twitter.com/DotDotJames/status/1506443371828686848

after: & before: cover many use cases, and can be used in any combo

before X date, before:2022-01-01 range of X to Y dates, after:2022-01-01 before:2022-02-01 multiple ranges, easiest to split up queries since X date, after:2022-03-14

& per OP question, can be used with site, e.g.,

after:2020-12-31 before:2022-01-01 site:news.ycombinator.com intitle:search

all posts w/ search in title during 2021 on HN

https://breezethat.com/?q=after%3A2020-12-31+before%3A2022-0...

or

after:2020-12-31 before:2022-01-01 site:reddit.com intitle:russia intitle:ukraine

all posts on Reddit during 2021 w/ Russia & Ukraine in title

https://breezethat.com/?q=after%3A2020-12-31+before%3A2022-0...

(all posts with search in title during 2021 on HN)

there's also some more advanced techniques, post on that forthcoming

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

#260

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

avazhi wrote: post #148
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"though I think there are a few areas that Bing is better" Curious what you think these are. I prefer Bing's UI to Google's but aside from that Bing is (IMO) a dumpster fire that quite literally makes me feel negligent (towards myself) when I use it - am I missing something?

Porn, in particular, but surprisingly I find that video search in general is better in Bing. Surprising because most of those video searches end up on YouTube, yet I seem to get better/higher quality results when I search on Bing than I do when on Google or YouTube.
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