Ask HN: Can Google be replaced? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Can Google be replaced?

3 pointsjmonegro8 comments

First Cuil, and now Wolfram Alpha. Google is still the dominant search engine, and it appears it will stay that way for a long time.

Do you think Google could be replaced?

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Given its market share, I don't think that Google could be replaced ; instead - if it happens - it would be rendered obsolete by a new paradigm for finding data.

I tend to agree with you, but you never know. Companies get complacent. I wouldn't try a frontal attack now, but in ten years Google might be very bureaucratic.

Also, it wouldn't be a new way of finding data that would make Google obsolete, but a new way of advertising. That's where their money comes from. They could be the best service in the world for finding information, but if for some reason advertisers preferred to reach people some other way, it wouldn't matter anymore how good Google was at search. They'd be reduced to a money-losing public service, like newspapers are now.

I don't think they'd become very bureaucratic. Sure, Microsoft did, but Apple didn't (at least publicly) after 20+ years. As for the advertising, they are pretty much safe for the coming years. AdSense is too big of a platform, and even though online advertising has declined, that is only because of the recession, and as internet usage increases, so will online advertising (once the economy starts to recover).

Re: Apple, that's not the story I hear from apple veterans from the mid-90's. I'm not sure how apple reduced bureaucracy (or if it did), but given some of the stories I've heard about the pre-Steve Apple, it was an awful place.

There are already stories of Google becoming more bureaucratic. For example, I remember Paul Buchheit mentioning in some talk about how he first joined Google because the previous place he was started to suck...then sometime later, he left Google for the same reason.

One possibility is that advertising becomes smart enough to know a lot about you from your profiles on social networks. Instead of ads when you're looking for something, there would be ads for when the system thinks you'll want something

If the system is good enough, that method of advertising will be better than search.

Also, as we need better filters, search will become contextualized based upon friend recommendations. That will also happen on social networks.

Possible, if we know a system better than PageRank aka http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy

Wolfram Alpha isn't a Google replacement, and isn't intended to be:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=What+do+you+dislike

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