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The article describes techniques used by all search engines, not just Google. Search engines have existed before Google, and despite Google's monopoly on search

The article describes techniques used by all search engines, not just Google. Search engines have existed before Google, and despite Google's monopoly on search, "Google clone" is a poor term to describe all search engines when alternatives with unique features (e.g. DuckDuckGo) exist.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
nostromo 7y ago
They are literally rebuilding Google by tracking how users use Google and rebuilding the SERPs. If that’s not a Google clone I don’t know what is.
- wizzwizz4 7y ago
  All search engines have search-engine results pages. They're looking at how users use Google Search because the data's there. They're making a competitor to Google Search. That doesn't mean they're rebuilding Google Search's SERPs, or making a Google Search “clone”; I've got results from Cliqz for queries I'm confident have never been put into Google before, meaning it's functioning as an independent search engine.
  - pheug 7y ago
    >They're looking at how users use Google Search because the data's there This. Having worked in past life for one of their competitors, can confirm - what users click on (in SERP) is one of the most powerful signals for ranking. And who got (almost) all the clicks in the world? Google! That's why it's so damn hard to beat them. It's the unreasonable effectiveness of data: more data (which they have almost all of) usually beats a smarter algorithm, and with 20 years R&D, theirs is surely not dumb. Do the clicks belong to users or Google, that's an interesting question, though.
adventskalender 7y ago
How many real alternatives exist, though? DuckDuckGo is based on Bing, afaik. So there are Google and Bing - any others?
- commoner 7y ago
  There are also Baidu and Yandex, which dominate China and Russia, respectively. https://www.baidu.com https://www.baidu.com https://yandex.com https://yandex.com Qwant is a France-based search engine that has a similar privacy focus to DuckDuckGo. https://www.qwant.com https://www.qwant.com Million Short tries to find sites that other search engines miss. https://millionshort.com https://millionshort.com Wikipedia has a more comprehensive list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines
  - adventskalender 7y ago
    Thanks! Wikipedia still mentions Yahoo! - I thought they gave up and switched to Bing years ago?
  - iudqnolq 7y ago
    It isn't clear to what extent Qwant actually makes their own results. In 2013 they said they were temporarily using Bing results they purchased as "training data" [wikipedia]. They haven't given any updates on that I could find (in English, at least), but they recently proudly announced they have 20B pages in their index in an article on their partnerships with Microsoft [betterweb]. Google's index is 1500 times larger, so I'm not sure how competitive their own index is [goog]. And, if they no longer needed to rely on Bing results, wouldn't they announce that? [wiki]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwant [betterweb]: https://betterweb.qwant.com/how-microsoft-tools-strengthen-qwant/ https://betterweb.qwant.com/how-microsoft-tools-strengthen-q... [goog]: https://venturebeat.com/2013/03/01/how-google-searches-30-trillion-web-pages-100-billion-times-a-month/ https://venturebeat.com/2013/03/01/how-google-searches-30-tr...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

nostromo 7y ago

They are literally rebuilding Google by tracking how users use Google and rebuilding the SERPs. If that’s not a Google clone I don’t know what is.

wizzwizz4 7y ago
All search engines have search-engine results pages. They're looking at how users use Google Search because the data's there. They're making a competitor to Google Search. That doesn't mean they're rebuilding Google Search's SERPs, or making a Google Search “clone”; I've got results from Cliqz for queries I'm confident have never been put into Google before, meaning it's functioning as an independent search engine.
- pheug 7y ago
  >They're looking at how users use Google Search because the data's there This. Having worked in past life for one of their competitors, can confirm - what users click on (in SERP) is one of the most powerful signals for ranking. And who got (almost) all the clicks in the world? Google! That's why it's so damn hard to beat them. It's the unreasonable effectiveness of data: more data (which they have almost all of) usually beats a smarter algorithm, and with 20 years R&D, theirs is surely not dumb. Do the clicks belong to users or Google, that's an interesting question, though.

adventskalender 7y ago

How many real alternatives exist, though? DuckDuckGo is based on Bing, afaik. So there are Google and Bing - any others?

commoner 7y ago
There are also Baidu and Yandex, which dominate China and Russia, respectively. https://www.baidu.com https://www.baidu.com https://yandex.com https://yandex.com Qwant is a France-based search engine that has a similar privacy focus to DuckDuckGo. https://www.qwant.com https://www.qwant.com Million Short tries to find sites that other search engines miss. https://millionshort.com https://millionshort.com Wikipedia has a more comprehensive list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines
- adventskalender 7y ago
  Thanks! Wikipedia still mentions Yahoo! - I thought they gave up and switched to Bing years ago?
- iudqnolq 7y ago
  It isn't clear to what extent Qwant actually makes their own results. In 2013 they said they were temporarily using Bing results they purchased as "training data" [wikipedia]. They haven't given any updates on that I could find (in English, at least), but they recently proudly announced they have 20B pages in their index in an article on their partnerships with Microsoft [betterweb]. Google's index is 1500 times larger, so I'm not sure how competitive their own index is [goog]. And, if they no longer needed to rely on Bing results, wouldn't they announce that? [wiki]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwant [betterweb]: https://betterweb.qwant.com/how-microsoft-tools-strengthen-qwant/ https://betterweb.qwant.com/how-microsoft-tools-strengthen-q... [goog]: https://venturebeat.com/2013/03/01/how-google-searches-30-trillion-web-pages-100-billion-times-a-month/ https://venturebeat.com/2013/03/01/how-google-searches-30-tr...