[Retra]

Some of those may be the result of trying to differentiate themselves. People might want an alternative to Google (the company), but they don't really want an alternative to Google (the search engine.)

If you're trying to beat someone like Google by offering a different-but-worse search engine, it's not really going to work. Facebook offers the same kind of problem. You're also not going to win by being the same. You have to do different-but-obviously-better, which is actually very very hard.