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"I will get mad when those products have better alternatives but it's not the case. Build better alternatives and I'm on board." How will you find out about th

"I will get mad when those products have better alternatives but it's not the case. Build better alternatives and I'm on board." How will you find out about the better alternatives? Are you certain there aren't good alternatives to translate, maps, flights, shopping etc? For any language? I know for a fact that google translate is bad for some ideographic languages and as a result there are competing services that companies have started to use instead (DeepL, etc). If the competition is better, how will you know? Are you going to dedicate time to hunting down alternatives and testing them out when the Google product is the only thing on screen and it works?

sidibe 6y ago
Someone will mention better alternatives here, after all I've been hearing about how ddg blows Google out of the water a couple times every week here for years.
- kevingadd 6y ago
  Generally speaking, HN posters are not the people who are going to be harmed by anti-competitive behavior or Google filling the first screen of results with their own products. It's ordinary people who use the web. You could probably argue that ordinary people don't care about quality and they're best served by using the vertically-integrated Google product, though...
- breakfastduck 6y ago
  Ddg is acceptable but it doesn’t blow Google out of the water at all. It’s miles ahead for me because of tracking etc, but I can’t see how anyone could think the actual search results are better
  - zentiggr 6y ago
    Every time in the last couple of years that DDG hasn't had a decent result, and I've used '!g' to see what else might come up, I've been very disappointed... usually a grab bag of crap sites with barely any relevance to my original search direction. We probably have very different searches.
- wolco 6y ago
  What about translation tools or maps. Hear of any good ones on here?
- aeurielesn 6y ago
  I may be an outlier but I haven't had a good experience with DDG for a while. I don't really feel like I would recommend it.
- chris_f 6y ago
  As DDG was mentioned, feel free to come check out Runnaroo. Similar to Startpage, the base for organic web results is Google, but it also includes additional vertical sources layered in to provide greater relevance. It also respects literal searches with quotation marks, which is a common gripe on HN. Still very new, but improving and growing rapidly. Example search for React.js - https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=react.js https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=react.js Existing monetization comes from the new Web Monetization API [0] standard (through Coil members) and as part of the Brave publisher program. [0] https://webmonetization.org/ https://webmonetization.org/
  - 1_player 6y ago
    Thanks for the heads up. I did some quick tests and it’s much better than DDG and 2020 Google, at least for my use case.
chimen 6y ago
I am constantly trying new things. I just ditched duckduck go for the third time. I'm using firefox since 2 months. I am aware of alternatives. I WANT to ditch Google too but I get value from it atm that I cannot find elsewhere.
- dybber 6y ago
  How would you bootstrap such a company? The solution as I see it is to forcefully break-up Google, such that these services can have their run as independent companies (Maps, flight search, product price comparison, etc.). This has been done before with big companies (e.g. break of Bell Systems into 7 companies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System)
  - TomMarius 6y ago
    And what good came out of the remains of Bell Systems afterwards?
  - kartayyar 6y ago
    The way Google: ship it and make it work really, really well. The product was so good that people noticed. They were able to take this and leverage this into being search for a really large property, like Back in the 90s there were lots of search engines. People didn't pick Google because it was hard to switch, they converged on Google because the product was that good - there was Infoseek, HotBot, AskJeeves, Alta Vista, Lycos, Yahoo, Excite ... the list goes on. It's a theoretical problem to have a significantly better search engine and not find users for it.
    - kevingadd 6y ago
      I'd argue that Google was able to win specifically because they had so much competition. They weren't fighting against one or two massive entrenched competitors in an established space. Search was still pretty new at that point and Google's approach to it was innovative. Google also had lots of space to improve on its competition when it came to metrics like latency, which paid off. Nobody really has the option to beat them on latency now. That's not really Unfair in any fashion but it is an example of how it would be much harder to dethrone the ruling search engine in 2020.
leetcrew 6y ago
I think you're overselling your point here. if I search "maps" in google, the google product is the first hit, but several major alternatives are right under it on the first page of results. FWIW, DeepL is also on the first page for "translate". I don't actually want to discover new products by finding their homepages in my search results. when I am looking for something new, I want to read a review in a publication I trust or at least a discussion among real humans in a forum.
- kevingadd 6y ago
  If you search for "route to <city>" on Google, you get a Google Maps embed with directions above search results from services like mapquest. That's what I'm referring to. (Do many people find mapping services by searching that way now? I don't know.)
osdiab 6y ago
It's mostly been word of mouth for me - Japanese friends telling me DeepL is way better for Japanese, people on HN complaining about Google Chrome performance vs Firefox. And competitors are coming pretty close to other Google stuff, Apple Maps is actually getting pretty good for me right now but mainly lacks the metadata about things like restaurant menus + the flexibility of routing like cheapest train fares or searching by last train and what not that Google has - honestly seems like low hanging fruit. Nobody gets close on search yet though, I've tried and failed to stick with DDG many times now.

sidibe 6y ago

Someone will mention better alternatives here, after all I've been hearing about how ddg blows Google out of the water a couple times every week here for years.

kevingadd 6y ago
Generally speaking, HN posters are not the people who are going to be harmed by anti-competitive behavior or Google filling the first screen of results with their own products. It's ordinary people who use the web. You could probably argue that ordinary people don't care about quality and they're best served by using the vertically-integrated Google product, though...
breakfastduck 6y ago
Ddg is acceptable but it doesn’t blow Google out of the water at all. It’s miles ahead for me because of tracking etc, but I can’t see how anyone could think the actual search results are better
- zentiggr 6y ago
  Every time in the last couple of years that DDG hasn't had a decent result, and I've used '!g' to see what else might come up, I've been very disappointed... usually a grab bag of crap sites with barely any relevance to my original search direction. We probably have very different searches.
wolco 6y ago
What about translation tools or maps. Hear of any good ones on here?
aeurielesn 6y ago
I may be an outlier but I haven't had a good experience with DDG for a while. I don't really feel like I would recommend it.
chris_f 6y ago
As DDG was mentioned, feel free to come check out Runnaroo. Similar to Startpage, the base for organic web results is Google, but it also includes additional vertical sources layered in to provide greater relevance. It also respects literal searches with quotation marks, which is a common gripe on HN. Still very new, but improving and growing rapidly. Example search for React.js - https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=react.js https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=react.js Existing monetization comes from the new Web Monetization API [0] standard (through Coil members) and as part of the Brave publisher program. [0] https://webmonetization.org/ https://webmonetization.org/
- 1_player 6y ago
  Thanks for the heads up. I did some quick tests and it’s much better than DDG and 2020 Google, at least for my use case.

chimen 6y ago

I am constantly trying new things. I just ditched duckduck go for the third time. I'm using firefox since 2 months. I am aware of alternatives. I WANT to ditch Google too but I get value from it atm that I cannot find elsewhere.

dybber 6y ago
How would you bootstrap such a company? The solution as I see it is to forcefully break-up Google, such that these services can have their run as independent companies (Maps, flight search, product price comparison, etc.). This has been done before with big companies (e.g. break of Bell Systems into 7 companies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System)
- TomMarius 6y ago
  And what good came out of the remains of Bell Systems afterwards?
- kartayyar 6y ago
  The way Google: ship it and make it work really, really well. The product was so good that people noticed. They were able to take this and leverage this into being search for a really large property, like Back in the 90s there were lots of search engines. People didn't pick Google because it was hard to switch, they converged on Google because the product was that good - there was Infoseek, HotBot, AskJeeves, Alta Vista, Lycos, Yahoo, Excite ... the list goes on. It's a theoretical problem to have a significantly better search engine and not find users for it.
  - kevingadd 6y ago
    I'd argue that Google was able to win specifically because they had so much competition. They weren't fighting against one or two massive entrenched competitors in an established space. Search was still pretty new at that point and Google's approach to it was innovative. Google also had lots of space to improve on its competition when it came to metrics like latency, which paid off. Nobody really has the option to beat them on latency now. That's not really Unfair in any fashion but it is an example of how it would be much harder to dethrone the ruling search engine in 2020.

leetcrew 6y ago

I think you're overselling your point here. if I search "maps" in google, the google product is the first hit, but several major alternatives are right under it on the first page of results. FWIW, DeepL is also on the first page for "translate". I don't actually want to discover new products by finding their homepages in my search results. when I am looking for something new, I want to read a review in a publication I trust or at least a discussion among real humans in a forum.

kevingadd 6y ago
If you search for "route to <city>" on Google, you get a Google Maps embed with directions above search results from services like mapquest. That's what I'm referring to. (Do many people find mapping services by searching that way now? I don't know.)

osdiab 6y ago

It's mostly been word of mouth for me - Japanese friends telling me DeepL is way better for Japanese, people on HN complaining about Google Chrome performance vs Firefox. And competitors are coming pretty close to other Google stuff, Apple Maps is actually getting pretty good for me right now but mainly lacks the metadata about things like restaurant menus + the flexibility of routing like cheapest train fares or searching by last train and what not that Google has - honestly seems like low hanging fruit. Nobody gets close on search yet though, I've tried and failed to stick with DDG many times now.