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What Google Can't Copy (Easily)
- alexandros 17y agoI have immense respect for those working under google's shadow to create a better/different search experience. The article clearly shows that their entire product development strategy is built around what google does and does not. Although as history has shown, when these companies accomplish anything they usually get acquired rather than becoming individually successful. But I guess history can only take you so far and Google was once a search underdog. So good luck duckduckgo!
- tomjen2 17y agoPotentially they could change a lot even if they where acquired, since they could tip the balance of search and they would properly allow Microsoft to by them for $40 billion :)
- josefresco 17y agoI highly doubt Google has some master list of features already coded just waiting to launch when a competitor releases something similar. First that seems like a huge waste of time, but also it gives too much credit to Google in that they'd need to have all these ideas first. Just doesn't add up. I do think however that they do have the ability to, in a very short time frame bake up responses to competitive features. But I would imagine it would be more on-demand than off-the-shelf. Any ex Googlers here to comment?
- epi0Bauqu 17y agoI think it is more that they are trying things all the time in a genuine desire to improve, but most of these don't get pushed live. Since they've tried most things internally over the past 11 years, it is highly likely they already have code that does more or less what competitors launch. Of course, I'd also like to hear something from real x-Googlers...
- kscaldef 17y agoI'm an ex-Yahoo, and there were all sorts of things like this in the Research Lab.
- sgk284 17y agoWhen I was at Google the sheer number of crazy projects being worked on internally, whether or not for profit, was insane. Literally thousands upon thousands of projects. They are working on anything and everything, I think that is something that the competition really underestimates here. This is why their parking lots have electrical sockets to plug your car into or why they released Lively (when I was there it was but a one man project that I saw at an internal techtalk). It's all things Googlers wanted to work on. They will work on anything they find interesting and they'll generally get the full support of the company (at least that's how it was in 2007). Now I'm at Microsoft and the biggest change to me is how focused Microsoft is at executing very specific projects. The other big change is how many strengths Microsoft has that most of the world refuses to acknowledge. Microsoft gets a lot of bad press, but holy shit when they target something, they go for all or nothing. There is a drive internal to Microsoft unlike any I've seen... when they want something, they won't stop until it's theirs. They want blood.
- gojomo 17y agoIt doesn't even have to be a matter of conscious strategy. Assume there are many, many creative people with many, many internal projects in many, many states of half-done-ness or neither-killed-nor-approved-for-rollout. Any competitor launch immediately gives all similar internal projects a second look, by a larger group of reviewers. The people working on it get another burst of motivation. To release it, even in rough 'labs' form, now benefits from an additional 'news hook' and blunts any impression Google is not innovating. It doesn't require a strategic plan, or large preemptive investment in ideas that are then intentionally held back -- it's just normal big-but-still-creative company dynamics.
- numbchuckskills 17y agothey do: it's called 20% time.
- cousin_it 17y agoGoogle can't copy features that would only work well on a small to medium site. Can't think of much more. Also, Gabriel, your work is wonderful. Keep it up, you're an inspiration to me.
- kscaldef 17y agoFWIW, Yahoo! Research Labs had a version of their search engine with "more/less commercial" sliders years ago.
- GavinB 17y agoI tried DuckDuckGo as my primary search provider. While I liked some of their features, I couldn't live without maps integration (called universal search in this post). Honestly, it would have been fine if they just forwarded me to google maps or mapquest.
- epi0Bauqu 17y agoThx for trying it. By maps integration, I assume you are referring to when Google displays a map when you type in an address or business name at the top of the results? I just want to make sure I understand exactly the use case.
- unalone 17y agoYep! That's the ticket for me, at least.
- epi0Bauqu 17y agoThx. I will definitely be adding this to Duck Duck Go.
- GavinB 17y agoThere are three basic use cases: 1) 123 main street wichita kansas -> should show me map or link that obviously takes me to a map 2) two addresses with the word "to" in between should offer me a link with directions 3) "restaurant" (or other business type) plus an address or zip code should take me to something like this: http://www.google.com/search?q=restaurant+11211&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a http://www.google.com/search?q=restaurant+11211&ie=utf-8... These really only save a few clicks, but I love having one box which can answer pretty much any question. Google does a decent job with the mapping, but it's definitely possible to do better. Of course, correctly guessing what a searcher means is always a tricky challenge.
- ramoq 17y agoI find it hard to believe that anything is off limits to Google due to technical complexity I somewhat disagree. There are some things, most likely due to technical complexity and cost/effort, that google provides at a low level of quality. ie. gmail search!!
- dschobel 17y agoWhile I agree Gmail search can be infuriating, how do you know it's a complexity issue that keeps it this way?
- btilly 17y agoI don't know if it is accurate, but http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=850938 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=850938 sheds a lot of light on why search might be the way it is.
- seldo 17y agoI really don't see how drastic changes are outside of Google's ability. Google (and Yahoo) can both bucket-test drastic interface changes to 1% or 0.01% of their audience, effectively simulating a small startup doing the same thing. (Related: post-search deal with Bing, experimenting with user interface in this way is Yahoo's explicit strategy for competing in search.)
- TheEcclesiast 17y agoGoogle can easily copy it, but a feature I'd like is a more convenient way to search within sites. The idea is expressed better in a picture : http://imgur.com/jRj89.png http://imgur.com/jRj89.png
- lacker 17y agoGoogle does put a site-search box in like that sometimes. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=imdb http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=imdb
- nostrademons 17y agoWhat's wrong with the site: restrict? http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+duck+duck+go+google http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+d...
- TheEcclesiast 17y agoNobody but power users understand this feature, and it is not convenient. Is your mother using site: restrict ?
- litewulf 17y ago(Actually... yes. Strangely enough, I've been very surprised. She figured it out because whatever site she uses has a "search box" that is basically just adding site:awesome.com to the query. She was then able to generalize it on sites with no search.)
- gus_massa 17y agoIn some searches, Google put a special link that say "More results from example.com" that use site:example.com.
- mattmaroon 17y ago"So they wait until either a) through bucket testing they are sure it is a good idea or b) a competitor adds a feature that users seem to like or the press makes a big deal about. They don't want any new search engine to really get a foothold so they need to react to these competitive feature launches lest a new search engine actually starts getting used :)" I think that is wrong, and it's pretty much just the first one. Google has the scale to multi-variate test most things very quickly, and is long-term enough in their thinking that they aren't pushing a product just because a few blogs read by .0000000008% of their users are drooling over it. They come up with ideas (some of which may be copies of competitors' ideas) test the hell out of them, and push the ones that work. End of story. I'd be surprised if they are more than marginally aware there are competitors to their search product. Seems highly unlikely they've got lots of features just waiting on a post from a rinky-dink tech blog to incite them to launch.
- epi0Bauqu 17y agoWolframAlpha, Cuil, and Search Wikia got a lot more press than just from "rinky-dink[y] tech blog[s]."
- tokenadult 17y agoToo bad so much of Cuil's press was about the failure of its launch. WolframAlpha is a good way to get most of the functionality of Mathematica for free, but for many informational searches Google still easily beats it. What's the advantage of Search Wikia over Google?
- epi0Bauqu 17y agoSearch Wikia is dead. It allowed random people to edit search results, like Wikipedia or Wikia does for articles.
- vaksel 17y agowhich kinda proves the point...all that press, and noone cares about them now. The only recent launch is bing...but even that started out with millions of original microsoft users and then was fueled by a marketing budget bigger than a small country's GDP.
- easyeboy 17y agoGoogle can't copy a BRAND! Your brand is a DUCK, they surely can't copy that! Also, patents, protect your project with patents, then enforce them! If you've got a unique or brilliant idea or invention, then file a patent on it! Eric is the CEO of FreezeCrowd, Inc. http://www.freezecrowd.com http://www.freezecrowd.com a great new social networking site launching soon for college students and alumni.
- easyeboy 17y agoAlso, this is really neat. Definitely something DuckDuckGo should look into. http://www.smallmeans.com/tools/siteflow/ http://www.smallmeans.com/tools/siteflow/
- patio11 17y agoGoogle cannot copy your startup's attitude, most particularly if your startup's attitude is strongly opposed to facilitating the arrest and torture of Chinese dissidents. If I had a search engine, I'd be strongly opposed to facilitating the arrest and torture of Chinese dissidents. Because after all, I think my American users would actually care pretty keenly on whether companies they do business with facilitate the arrest and torture of Chinese dissidents. Say Google, what was your policy on that again?
- vaksel 17y agoi think it comes to the bottom line, all the "causes" don't really mean anything. It's always the same 10,000 people protesting environmentalism, darfur, G20, care bears. And even those, majority will come back to Google a week later when the "boo Google" protests get boring and they'll switch to "boo Sponge Bob squarepants, a corrupt depiction of the scumbag capitalist anti-environmentalism" The bottom line, is that Google doesn't want to lose a 1 billion person Chinese market over a bunch of hippies. Long term(20-30 years) it'll account for 70-80% of their revenue, turning the back on it now would be the dumbest thing for them to do.
- patio11 17y agoi think it comes to the bottom line, all the "causes" don't really mean anything. I disagree -- Google reacts to bad PR. It is about the only external factor they react to, since they've got a de-facto monopoly on the Internet's license to print money combined with essentially no regulatory oversight, anti-trust issues, etc. See, e.g., how quickly they killed their I-can't-believe-its-not-Campfire app when seven PR-savvy guys in a room in Chicago threatened them with being seen as the Goliath for a change.
- vaksel 17y agothey react to bad PR when it costs them nothing to fix it. The whole Chinese incident would have cost them billions, and it blew over after a few weeks
- 17y ago
- easyeboy 17y agoDuckDuckGo could make better operators or custom search features that are easy to use.
- epi0Bauqu 17y agoCare to elaborate on specifics?
- Tichy 17y ago"First, they can't easily make drastic changes to their results pages." Maybe they can't change their main page, but they can easily launch variant pages that look like whatever they like. They already did so in several cases.
- Everest 17y agoPeople don't bookmark pages because search engines make it so easy to find content. So rather than bookmark the php manual page on date formatting, I'll just type php dates into Google knowing that it will pop up in the first ten results. However, I also notice that I regularly have trouble locating content this way when I go back for it. This is usually when I am looking for something very specific and forget the exact query string that generated that result. On the other hand, there are times when I'm searching for a datapoint and am frustrated that Google keeps throwing the same links at me. I have to constantly hit "next" to get the results that I want. I wonder if there is an opportunity for a search engine to heavily invest in either providing people with completely fresh info every time they query for something or provide them just the results they've seen before. This is probably not relevant to Duck Duck Go but thought I'd throw it out there.