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Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

> Fact 1: Google only pulled search business out of China. adsense/adwords/maps works fine in China

YouTube and Gmail also don't work in China, which are significant. They technically didn't leave China, however, because they never entered it.

> Fact 2: Search engines are more and more irrelevant these days. All interesting new content are either from Weibo or Wechat (or other closed garden)

I think you mean to qualify that with in China?

> Fact 4: Firewalls in China has a hierarchical layers of blocking

Most of the western-world web moved to HTTPS specifically because China was inspecting plain text packets. It was interesting to watch the change over happen from 2008-2011.

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> I think you mean to qualify that with in China?

I mean even if the "android app" came out how does it gain traction?

Does anybody actually use an "app" to search on mobile phones?

If it was my only alternative to baidu, maybe.

A search engine as an app?

You type some phrases into an app, the app displays results in a webview, you click the SERP, then what? a browser opens?

Why don't you use the browser on your phone directly for searching?

That's why I think Google is working on some ROM feature, not an app. Or maybe there are some misudnerstanding from the "source"

If it's an app it's doomed to fail.

Are you aware of the fact that Google has search apps on both iOS Appstore and Android Playstore? If you want to know who is using such apps, look up the reviews on them.

Did you mean com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox and id284815942 ?

These are not exactly web page search. It need deep integration with account(gmail), maps (with up-to-dateupdated POI), schedules, music, movie reviews, news.

It covered much more than just search. I am not sure google can pull that off the same app in China. It will be very unlikely.

I use google's search app on Android multiple times every day. Its a one-click from the home screen to open the voice input and process requests that way. Opening a browser, pressing the voice input key, speaking, then pressing the search button is way more steps than using the native app for search.

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