I don't feel the need for another Google. Individual search engines of the major sites are proving decent enough.
The search engine within StackOverflow, Reddit, Twitter have been good enough for me. For arcane stuff, DDG is ok. For images, I use Bing.
I sort of know which site can answer which query of mine, hence I rarely use GOOG these days, unless it is some mass-market, in-the-news kind of thingy.
Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
301–310 of 332 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#302Earlier 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 founder here - this needs to be corrected.
We have a path to profitability. Indeed, the entire business model is engineered to be sustainable. Whether the price will be accepted by the market (we do not need many users to be profitable, maybe around 50,000) is another matter. I am sorry if you do not feel like on. But one thing we will not do, is loose money on every search.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#303A better question might be, what do you want that Google doesn’t already give you?
Personally I wouldn’t mind a search engine that was focused only on code results. Not only results that that showed code, but code focused results - tutorials, samples, books.
For example, if I search for “c web server” in a private tab on on Google… well… I get exactly what I want. If I search for “water shader”… I mostly get what I want as well (youtube videos not code though).
Hum, I think you might have a hard time with this.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#304Earlier 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…
> 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.
Also Bellingcat recommends Yandex: https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/how-tos/2019/12/26/guid...
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
`see search results for different genres/communities` Can you elaborate?
I just like and agree with conceptually Nuzzerino's idea above. "Decentralized configuration would allow for communities with given interests to configure and distribute customizations for that audience, in a way that would appeal to that audience."
Couldn’t the user just use a !bang for that?
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 founder here - this needs to be corrected. We have a path to profitability. Indeed, the entire business model is engineered to be sustainable. Whether the price will be accepted by the market (we do not need many users to be profitable, maybe around 50,000) is another matter. I am sorry if you do not feel like on. But one thing we will not do, is loose money on every search.
IMO you need to start charging users now to learn the lesson on pricing quickly.
You have a theoretical path to profitability, but as you haven’t yet charged a penny it’s not proven to be viable. I genuinely hope you prove me wrong, and turn on paid subscriptions and it’s a huge success. If it’s not, better to learn that lesson now while you still have a chance to change course.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#307Because 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.
From https://kagi.com/faq, emphasis mine.
> We plan to offer entry level plans for as low as $10/month, *unlimited plan at around $20-$30/mo" as well as have bundles (to include Kagi email and other services), organization/team plans, family plans and annual payment discounts available.
I don't know where you're getting 5c per search from, but that unlimited plan would cap it at something I could live with and I doubt I'll need it.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#308Ultimately 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…
So basically google is the MLS listings of the web now. Sounds like a job for regulators to step in for both the problems. Agree we need a coop of search engines, but I'll add that probably an org like mozilla is best suited for it, that way it can stay non-profit and recycle any profits back into R&D. personally I believe most of these solid business plan companies can be replaced by a simpler open-source version as…
I suspect Mozilla would penalize sites that track you, which is most sites, which would cause people to not use it and go back to Google when it wasn't showing them what they expected.
Mozilla is probably in the best position to do it, I'm just not sure they actually would do it in a way that appealed to consumers.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#309The 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…
That would be awesome!
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#310>, 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…
> One thing a competitor needs is a new and innovative technical algorithm.
Not really, because Google can do algorithms. For a new competitor to really succeed they have to start with something Google can't do. Perhaps:
- device/platform related. Google owns chrome & android but a competitor could emerge somewhere out of their reach, like only on iPhone, only on airpods, alexa, oculus, etc.
- being worthless to 99% of the market to make it 10X better to a 1% audience (e.g. developers, nurses, or even more niche like college athletes, jewish moms, etc)
- privacy/ad related