4 ms·

we need viable alternatives, simply for the fact that without competition Google would have no reason to innovate.

• patio11 18y ago
  I think it is a bit more pressing than that. They haven't stopped innovating, but their pricing for AdWords is maddeningly non-transparent (its an auction, except when Google decides its not an auction) and only constrained by the availability of other viable contextual ad platforms. Of which there are, essentially, none. Anyone who disagrees with this assessment of Microsoft and Yahoo's offerings should be sentenced to actually using the things. The interfaces are garbage, the traffic is low-quality, and most damning of all there just isn't enough of it to make dealing with the other headaches a viable use of your time. Google can routinely find $600 worth of inventory for me in a month, Microsoft struggles to find $30 -- and I'm in about the most non-technical niche you could imagine using a search engine.
  • dotcoma 18y ago
    agree. but I'm not sure that merging Yahoo! Search and Live Search would be much of an improvement...
• cdibona 18y ago
  Not speaking for Google, but I'd also point out that newcomers and competitors can experiment with search (think ranking, ui, etc) in very interesting ways. For all the teasing that cuil received, the did try something pretty interesting with the ui, for instance. I also know that competing on search is very difficult and expensive, given the computational demands, which is why new, good quality competitors is hard for us to come by.