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> The better my search engine is, the more of user base I “steal”. Very bold assumption on your part. Google's not #1 because it's orders of magnitude better

> The better my search engine is, the more of user base I “steal”. Very bold assumption on your part. Google's not #1 because it's orders of magnitude better than anything else anyone could come up with. It's #1 because Chrome's #1, while #2 (Safari) and #4 (Firefox) receive millions each year to keep it as default. Your alternative, even if objectively better (whatever that means for a search engine) will never take a significant chunk of Google's market share because you can't outpay Google to get it into people's pockets by default. That's what anti-trust is about.

notpushkin 4y ago
> Google's not #1 because it's orders of magnitude better than anything else That was the assumption in the OP article – at least, that it was better than competitors at first. Of course, being the default plays a significant role in it keeping its popularity nowadays, but I still believe it can be worked around (and will be, but it'll take time).
- input_sh 4y ago
  It's still better than everything else in my opinion. I use DDG by default, but sometimes have to revert back to Google. But those are rare enough that it's not signifanctly better than anything else. Something better will come eventually, but it'll be a very uphill battle. Enthusiasts will use it (myself included), most other people will not. TikTok is the only example I can think of of something succeeding in the past decade that's not from a company that also offers like a million other products. That's the power of having a monopoly. If it gets regulated a bit (example: you get a prompt to choose your default search engine when you first open a browser), Google/Apple/Microsoft/Amazon might lose a dominant position in a category or two, but they have a dominant position in so many other categories that it'll mean nothing to them. The only possible solution is regulating them hard, forcing each of those to dissolve into a dozen smaller companies and preventing them from buying up the competition even further. Then and only then will startups have a shot at snatching up a significant number of categories to really endanger what we now know as the Big Four.

notpushkin 4y ago

> Google's not #1 because it's orders of magnitude better than anything else That was the assumption in the OP article – at least, that it was better than competitors at first. Of course, being the default plays a significant role in it keeping its popularity nowadays, but I still believe it can be worked around (and will be, but it'll take time).

input_sh 4y ago
It's still better than everything else in my opinion. I use DDG by default, but sometimes have to revert back to Google. But those are rare enough that it's not signifanctly better than anything else. Something better will come eventually, but it'll be a very uphill battle. Enthusiasts will use it (myself included), most other people will not. TikTok is the only example I can think of of something succeeding in the past decade that's not from a company that also offers like a million other products. That's the power of having a monopoly. If it gets regulated a bit (example: you get a prompt to choose your default search engine when you first open a browser), Google/Apple/Microsoft/Amazon might lose a dominant position in a category or two, but they have a dominant position in so many other categories that it'll mean nothing to them. The only possible solution is regulating them hard, forcing each of those to dissolve into a dozen smaller companies and preventing them from buying up the competition even further. Then and only then will startups have a shot at snatching up a significant number of categories to really endanger what we now know as the Big Four.