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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?

#271

Post by vmullin »

jakub_g wrote: post #202

This article has insights from folks who actually tried: https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-06/building-a-search-engine-fr... TL;DR you need a lot of money and users (catch-22). Also, massive scale and massive noise. You can also search HN for 'cliqz' for discussions about Cliqz shutting down.

Cliqz' blog is really insightful.

In case you weren't aware, Brave Search is led and built by key team members from Cliqz: https://search.brave.com/

The growth and usability of Brave Search this past year has been strong, with some significant features planned throughout 2022.

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

#272

Post by hotpotamus »

vmception wrote: post #206
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…

Somewhat related is how there is a whole generation of people that think they are entitled to finding information on a search engine, or a web indexed accessible source, and if its not there then it must not exist! I see this in discussions a lot where many times the answer is that the data doesn't exist, but thats not satisfactory to the person making the challenging.

I mean, this is the state of the world currently. I doubt I'd be able to do my job without some sort of search engine. I do talk to people in my company who worked in tech before the internet and they mention going to bookstores and reading books and how weird that seems now even to they who lived through it.

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

#273

Post by hobofan »

Closi wrote: post #256
schleck8 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Kagi is just showing google and bing results mixed together.

It's not _just_ that: https://kagi.com/faq#Where-are-your-results-coming-from

Anyways, Kagi results vastly outperform Google results in quality for me. I'd happily pay the rather steep price they are currently targeting, should that end up being how expensive it is.

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

#274

Post by satellite2 »

technothrasher wrote: post #262
satellite2 wrote: post #254

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…

> 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. Huh, maybe I don't eat there enough to notice differences, but on the occasions lately that I've had a McDonald's burger, I haven't noticed the quality being anything but terrible. Not entirely unpleasant, but just not at all a high quality meal, even compared to so…

Well it's still McDonald's we're talking about, it's still going to be 3mm thick patties and very sweet sauce. But with less soy derivatives, non caloric sweeteners and corn instead of wheat I have the impression.

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

#276

Post by technobabbler »

nr2x wrote: post #241
technobabbler wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You just invented pre-Google Yahoo!

I know. I remember and loved it then.

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

#277

Post by technobabbler »

shisisms wrote: post #251
technobabbler wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd gladly pay for a good search engine, but I'm probably in the minority.

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

#278

Post by technobabbler »

mbg721 wrote: post #246
technobabbler wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Isn't that more or less what Yahoo was supposed to be (an index of curated links)?

Yes. There was a period of several years when Google's results were better than Yahoo, but once the human search engines bankrupt, the algorithmic SEO just kept getting worse and worse =/ Too bad...

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

#279

Post by bsder »

jtolmar wrote: post #139
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…

> I would be interested in anyone posting what they think is an economically viable path to challenging Google. You only search whitelisted sites, which removes a lot of the SEO and blogspam from the results, and makes the index is wildly smaller. Search is free, but users can also pay a cheap subscription for the ability to flag sites as spammy, submit sites they think are missing, and submit queries the site has tr…

> I don't think VC-encouraged hypergrowth is possible with the above strategy, but you could probably get to ramen profitable in a reasonable time frame, with slow growth ever after.

The fate of runnaroo seems to provide evidence to the contrary.

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