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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?

#311

Post by satellite2 »

randomhedgehog wrote: post #282
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…

I don't quite understand what you mean when you say "sending users to those websites is not profitable for google" - referring to Wikipedia, Stack, Reddit etc... Organic search results only ever profit Google if they answer the user's question, because it makes that user more likely to use Google again and click an ad in the future. If a user searches something and the top result doesn't answer their question, then G…

Because those websites don't contain ads provided by the Google network, while Google can choose to send the user to websites that contain ads for which they are going to take a cut.

Obviously the best for Google would be to send the user to a website with the best content and that contains Google ads but that's often not both the case.

It's an optimization problem, and generally you cannot optimize for two variables, profits and user satisfaction.

Maximizing only for profits would probably lead to completely garbage results so they probably have to compromise.

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

#312

Post by tetris11 »

mbrameld wrote: post #121
ryandrake wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even in niche areas, I think it's still an enormous task to challenge Google. Despite the fact that 90% of my searches for "WTF does this stacktrace mean?" end up on StackOverflow, I invariably start my search on Google because every now and then it gives me useful non-StackOverflow tidbits, and I know I can always drill in more with specific tags on StackOverflow later. It's telling, that a Google search scoped to…

I don't think the fact that the web site owner hasn't implemented better search than Google for their site is evidence that they can't do it, simply that they haven't.

This entirely. Big companies grow complacent. Which to me, in time, equates to Google's timely downfall.

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

#313

Post by mbg721 »

tetris11 wrote: post #312
mbrameld wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the fact that the web site owner hasn't implemented better search than Google for their site is evidence that they can't do it, simply that they haven't.

This entirely. Big companies grow complacent. Which to me, in time, equates to Google's timely downfall.

No empire lasts forever; when was the last time you went to Sears?

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

#314

Post by tetris11 »

jpalomaki wrote: post #99
festive-minsky wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“declining quality” means current google vs past google, not other search engines

This is also not a fair comparison, because Internet is changing constantly.

Yeah, and large near-monopolies grow complacent.

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

#315

Post by SpodGaju »

missedthecue wrote: post #300
SpodGaju wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know, that’s for smarter people than me to figure out. But they are a monopoly so anti-trust action is called for.

If you're not sure how it can solve the problem, why does it even cross your mind to recommend it in the first place?

I do not know how to cure cancer, but I am sure it is not good for me. So I go to someone who might know more about how to get rid of it.

You can know there is a problem without knowing how to fix it. That should not stop you from talking about the problem.

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

#316

Post by MR4D »

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…

> Ultimately I think it’s because the internet is just too big!

This doesn't address why MSFT can't compete with Google. If you solve that problem, then you really get to the heart of the solution.

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

#317

Post by ricardo81 »

2 cents,

With so many bots, a lot of sites run a whitelist process of user agents, so every new entrant is automatically blocked in those cases, and for the rest, any large scale crawling is quite likely to get blocked.

Anecdotally it seems a relatively new search engine entrant is using Chrome user agents and follows Googlebot robots.txt directives so are impossible to block. If true, that's an absurd way for a new player to enter the market and just annoys webmasters.

A recent anti-competitive report by the UK government estimated that it would take about $20bn dollars for a new entrant to compete on Google's level.

Then there's how Google pay Mozilla/Apple very large sums of money based on their ROI/search which no one else can compete with, partly due to the invasive surveillance capitalism that Google follows. That ultimately means that anyone who wants to compete has to pay browsers and operating systems to enter the market in a substantial way.

All that said, encouraging people to find alternative sources of information is most likely the best route to diversification with or without government(s) intervention.

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

#318

Post by joel-bikebus »

eveningtree wrote: post #29

I have a broader answer for this: By the very nature of solutions: a new company cannot beat google at general search. Google was and is search. Like a tree that has grown up and shadows the entire land around it. There will be random small pockets of sunlight with smaller plants in it. But the big tree owns the area. There can be a short term competition via extremely specialized search engines, but they will not ri…

No post body was provided.

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

#319

Post by Closi »

omnicognate wrote: post #307
Closi wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dou…

> 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.

I said a single search 'can cost' 5 cents, but in reality it depends on the search and how many filters you apply.

You can view the cost of your searches on your account. Each 'user search' can be multiple 'charged searches', which is why the cost can be >5c for some searches (e.g. if you search Dog, then click images and size -> large this is 3 searches charged to your account not one, and if you click through various options to refine your image search each click is chargable for instance).

If you click on the top result, find out it's not what you wanted so hit back, then click on the second result, this is charged as two searches if your browser prompts a reload - which depends on the page you visit (even though I would class it as a single search).

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

#320

Post by 6510 »

IMSAI8080 wrote: post #267
native_samples wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google knows about external inbound links, so has more data on which to rank your pages than you do.

I think the most important data that is difficult to obtain is a history of which links people click on for each search query term. I think that's really the special sauce that Google has that others do not. There is a catch-22 where you need a lot of users to get the data but you can't get the users without the data. Initially Google pulled ahead with inbound link counting, but anyone can clone that. It's the click…

hah, that one is easy. People click the one at the top the most, then nr 2, after that nr 3, etc you see the pattern?

Google was epic when it started but quickly ended up indexing it self in a near closed loop. Everyone else was not important, it was all about the picture in front of them that was really just a mirror. Everyone stopped making home pages, forums and weblogs because it just doesn't make sense to do it.

Shit, people looking to buy something talking among their own before doing the purchase? KILL IT WITH FIRE!

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