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There seems to be a growing consensus around the idea that alternative search engines aren't viable without their own browser. Cliqz (acquired by Brave), DDG (o

There seems to be a growing consensus around the idea that alternative search engines aren't viable without their own browser. Cliqz (acquired by Brave), DDG (obviously successful by some metrics, but not a real threat to Google), Kagi (pops up from time to time here)[0]. Given that Google considers it worth tens of billions of dollars a year to remain the default on Apple devices and Firefox, the default search advantage is clearly quite important. I'm not sold on the idea that convincing people to install a different browser will be easier than teaching them to install an extension or choose a different default search provider, but clearly the latter isn't paying off. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28799049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28799049

toper-centage 5y ago
They are viable, but growth is significantly hindered by GOOGLE. When you install a search engine extension, that is explicitly labeled as such, Google will still "warn" users that an extention has "hijacked" their default search provider, and recommend to revert back. This is obviously anti-conpetitive but governments are too slow to react. Furthermore, extensions are at the mercy of extension stores' obscure policies, and are often dropped on a whim by "reviewers". With that said, tens of millions of users is hardly "unviable". There are several profitable search engines.