3 ms·

Also because people like typing "weather tomorrow", pressing Enter, then immediately seeing what the weather will be like tomorrow.

by MarkMc 9y ago

dx034 9y ago
Just because one company offers a superior solution, doesn't mean that it cannot be harmful. I also find Google the best search engine for complicated queries (while I use duckduckgo.com for everything else) but I'm still concerned about their market power. Every monopoly (or quasi-monopoly which Google is in Europe) should have intense scrutiny by regulators and governments. That doesn't mean nationalisation but it means that these companies will have less freedom to further extend their market power. If Google has an issue with that they could just do what other conglomerates have done before and split up. The same applies to Amazon where synergies between AWS and the core business are not really clear to me. Only facebook really has only one product, the other companies have a collection of loosely related products.
- briandear 9y ago
  Why doesn’t someone build a competing search engine for Europe? Serious question. Seems like the EU prefers to tax and harm the incumbent but do little in the way of improving tax policy that would encourage US style venture investment and the resulting innovation. It’s very difficult for investors in Europe to make any money — in a place like France, capital gains are punitively taxed and apparently there isn’t a French Google competitor. Go figure.
  - dx034 9y ago
    Microsoft has spent billions trying to beat Google, without much success. They now get a lot of traffic because it's the standard engine in Win10 (basically doing what they did with IE a decade back) but not because of superior quality. I try to get away from Google and try Bing regularly (directly or through duckduckgo). For complicated queries, results on Google are clearly superior. Google knows that the whole company indirectly depends on this so that they constantly improve their algorithms. I doubt anyone could reach their quality, even with a few billion € to spend.

Also because people like typing "weather tomorrow", pressing Enter, then immediately seeing what the weather will be like tomorrow.

by MarkMc 9y ago

Also because people like typing "weather tomorrow", pressing Enter, then immediately seeing what the weather will be like tomorrow.

dx034 9y ago

Just because one company offers a superior solution, doesn't mean that it cannot be harmful. I also find Google the best search engine for complicated queries (while I use duckduckgo.com for everything else) but I'm still concerned about their market power. Every monopoly (or quasi-monopoly which Google is in Europe) should have intense scrutiny by regulators and governments. That doesn't mean nationalisation but it means that these companies will have less freedom to further extend their market power. If Google has an issue with that they could just do what other conglomerates have done before and split up. The same applies to Amazon where synergies between AWS and the core business are not really clear to me. Only facebook really has only one product, the other companies have a collection of loosely related products.

briandear 9y ago
Why doesn’t someone build a competing search engine for Europe? Serious question. Seems like the EU prefers to tax and harm the incumbent but do little in the way of improving tax policy that would encourage US style venture investment and the resulting innovation. It’s very difficult for investors in Europe to make any money — in a place like France, capital gains are punitively taxed and apparently there isn’t a French Google competitor. Go figure.
- dx034 9y ago
  Microsoft has spent billions trying to beat Google, without much success. They now get a lot of traffic because it's the standard engine in Win10 (basically doing what they did with IE a decade back) but not because of superior quality. I try to get away from Google and try Bing regularly (directly or through duckduckgo). For complicated queries, results on Google are clearly superior. Google knows that the whole company indirectly depends on this so that they constantly improve their algorithms. I doubt anyone could reach their quality, even with a few billion € to spend.