3 ms·

There were definitely no search engines as good as Google pre-Google.

• benologist 17y ago
  Sure, in 1998. This is 2010 though, there are alternatives especially in China where Google's never even had majority market share. Even outside of China there are alternatives even if we laugh at their efforts - at this point if you hid Bing behind Google's interface people probably wouldn't even notice the difference most of the time. DuckDuckGo's made by a single guy and seems to be widely applauded. The biggest argument against some competitors is how familiar we are with Google rather than actual inferiority.
  • heresy 17y ago
    Have you used the internet from within China? Baidu cannot compete internationally on the strength of their technology. The quality of their results is sub-par, and subject to gaming if you have enough money to pay them. Their market share is as big as it is because of the fact that Baidu is essentially the Chinese Pirate Bay. Feats somewhat more difficult to reproduce when competing on a level playing field where promoting, aiding and abetting piracy is somewhat frowned upon. Who would want to compete with the deck stacked against you like that? Sure, China's market may be big enough to mask such deficiencies, blinded as everyone is by that 1 billion+ number, but its a net loss, long term, losing access to a quality competitor.