What would it take to unseat Google?

I think the most likely way Google dies is if web search itself dies.

Maybe because something else replaces the "web" and Google failed to catch up. Much like how Microsoft monopolised desktop, but failed to capture the rising (and now dominant) mobile market.

Maybe AI agents become reliable enough to a point where a vast majority of people looking for information will reach out to ChatGPT instead of searching on the web.

Maybe all of the things we used to do on the web, we instead do in a handful of apps that Google has no access to.

To be honest I'm not going to bet on Google dying off anytime within my lifetime.

Let me give you some thoughts from a shifted point of view:

Techy people here on HN can easily circumvent Google Search result issues, the real harm is for the average user.

Ways to deal with terrible Google Search results:

1. For complex computer problems, Google search is still has the biggest index, and less affected by SEO spam.

2. When using Google as substitute for a websites builting engine, google dorks get the job done.

3. Modern browsers allow you to switch enginees on the fly from the address bar (eg. Brave Browser has :w which instantly switches to Wikipedia) and there are similar keywords for opening bookmark.

4. If I know where I want to go, I go there directly using those shortcuts.

5. When looking for inspiration or quality stuff to read I search hn.algolia.com, use Brave Search Goggles or any other "custom" browser enginees that give results for specific topic.

6. Ask ChatGPT or some other Chatbot. (Results differ, but it works sometimes)

7. I have collected by own sites and bookmarks over time.

The only thing I don't know how to search are Product Reviews.

I think "general" search enginees are in decline, and (techy people) are gking back to pretty much manual indexing.

Google was unseated for me by Kagi. I find the results and overall user experience is much better. However, since it isn’t a free service, I’m probably in the minority of people who are willing to pay for search.

I’ve been telling pretty much anyone I think will be interested about them to try and get people to see there is life without Google.

That said, I still use YouTube, and also use Google Maps for looking up businesses… though I tend to use Apple Maps for actual turn by turn directions in the car. My Gmail account has been relegated to my junk email.

1) Do ads better

2) Kill YouTube (somehow)

3) Realize that if your product isn't free, it's not competing with Google.

The hard part is reconciling all of these things at once. Google wins because they know people like low barriers-of-entry. Type in a search query and get "instant" results mixed with "instant" advertising. Delve into a YouTube video before getting sucker-punched by an ad a minute or two later. Fulfilling and monetizing our knee-jerk desires is what makes and keeps Google successful.

Needn't do a thing. As you alluded, they're on a trajectory to irrelevance all on their own.

It started the moment Google stopped putting the user first.

That opened up an unparalleled opportunity for someone to do better, and they will. We've already seen flickers of this across their other products, with competitors besting them in cloud infrastructure and AI.

It would hardly accomplish the unseating, but influencing people to stop using it even if just for search, would be helpful.

Duckduckgo is the only thing that has come close to doing this, but insignificantly. Unfortunately, while DDG seems less sinister than Google, it is also less functional - I find it one of the worst engines for most things. I really miss Scroogle!

Google is a monster, and as much as many would love to see it go away, it's here to stay without some unprecedented paradigm change. Thankfully the work of some few provides some options around it. I try to support this, though am frequently perceived as odd for doing so.

If it helps any, Amazon is shitting its own formidable pile of waste upon the internet. I can't find an article on any consumable product without wading through dozens of blogurgitations exalting the magnificent cloaca of Lord Bezos - regardless of search engine!

>What would it take to unseat Google?

Same old thing.

You've got to have more real capital than Google has at their disposal, and you've got to deploy it irrationally in their markets for longer than they can afford to remain solvent.

The question is: how can we organize the world's information better than Google?

I've designed a potential solution over the past 12 years, and just launched the beta this week.

It's called the World Wide Scroll: https://scroll.pub/wws.html

If you had all the world's best information on your local machine, you would need Google a lot less.

Apple's deal with ChatGPT could lead to a significant decrease in Google searches. Queries going to ChatGPT 4.o+ from Apple devices could directly lead to less usage of Google -- a result that could compound significantly over time.

I think a couple of generations, or never. IBM still exists, for example.

Already replaced by chatgpt for me. I use it for all search. Rarely use google.

And is google's AI solution going to work out? Momentum is not on their side.

Google = public infrastructure since its ubiquity. If its recognised as such - perhaps there will be a shift in the tide.

The same thing that it'd take to unseat all the other major tech companies at the same time.

Yahoo still has more traffic than Bing, but nearly everyone agrees that Yahoo is dead.

I can say that I'm fed up with Google's current performance, I'm becoming increasingly disappointed with Google, I can feel that Google has to take advertising revenue into account, this is an unchangeable fact. Therefore, I now use more AI-based search engine tools to find information. Although this is the case, I have to find multiple tools to verify the accuracy of the information, this may be the only reason why I can't completely trust AI.

I often use the following three AI search engines (Perplexity.ai / Felo.ai / you.com).

For research and academic purposes, I often use Perplexity and Felo. If it is for general information retrieval, I will use You. However, for searching information from other countries, I mainly use Felo, its performance in bilingual search is the best. Of course, Perplexity is also an important choice, this is the biggest change in the past year.

Build a better Google.