[CrlNvl]

As already pointed out, there's no real alternative to YouTube, and more importantly, Maps. Sure, OSM is a wonderful database, but the UX/UI is years behind GMaps. And other providers are not as fast/intuitive as GMaps. I really hope Qwant Maps is going to shake up things...

[ashelmire]

What about Vimeo, Twitch, and other video sharing and streaming sites?

I'm not really happy with youtube. In my opinion, it's hard to find quality content if you don't already know what you're looking for. They do have lots of content. The platform itself is the definition of "meh". They have their userbase and massive infrastructure... that's their edge.

There was a recent post to HN about alternatives to Maps. Maps might be the best, but it isn't like other maps services aren't just as good for most users.

The real elephant in the room is Search. I haven't really used another search engine in years.

[freeflight]

> it's hard to find quality content if you don't already know what you're looking for

But if you already know what you are looking for, then YouTube will usually have the most relevant, and sometimes even high-quality, content.

That's the direct result of massive userbase+infrastructure and an edge very hard to beat and gets even harder as time passes and more content gets uploaded to YouTube.

[ashelmire]

Oh, absolutely. But here's the thing - a lot of content wanes quickly in relevance over time. You may never catch up to youtube in terms of total content (at least... not soon). But you can beat them in features, in look and feel, in the way you treat your content creators and users. And that can add up over time.

As Paul Graham said, "There is always room. In a hundred years the only social networking sites will be the Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, and Del.icio.us? Not likely.”

You don't start out by beating the giant. You pick users away here and there. You find a niche. You find other niches. You keep what you have, take what you can. You don't even have to beat the giant ever. Become the number 2 video sharing site. Hell, become the number 10 video sharing site and I bet you'll have more money than you know what to do with, even if most people have never heard of you.

[nielsbot]

Anecedotal: I think Duck Duck Go (DDG) is adequate for most of my searches... I still switch to Google to check when DDG doesn't satisfy...

[ashelmire]

I just gave it a shot on a pretty simple phrase that came to mind ("rails render") and it came up with multiple Japanese links on the first page (even when I go to settings and change region to US and language to English). It doesn't tell me how many results it found, or suggest any alternate queries until I get to the end of all the infinite scrolling. Also I'm somewhat offended by infinite scrolling. You can turn it off, but it still just does a "load more" instead of pagination.

It seems to get around 50 results for this query. Google returns 7 million. No foreign languages in the first two pages.

I decided to give it another shot. "sort git commits by date" was my query. I was pretty impressed by the formatting of the card it displayed at the top, but it was wrong (other top results seemed good though).

I don't know if this is ready for the switch.

[KarelVonBarel]

Regarding the maps you might want to have a look at https://en.mapy.cz/

[nielsbot]

Do you mean on the web? Are you looking for a web API or a mobile app? I argue that Apple Maps is a reasonable alternative for many... (Then again, I'm a biased Apple user so I could be mistaken)

[CrlNvl]

Yes I'm talking on the web, and I do not own any Apple devices, so Apple Maps is not an option.

[nielsbot]

This is in beta: MapKit JS (https://developer.apple.com/maps/mapkitjs/)

Free daily limit of 250,000 map views and 25,000 service calls.

[graeme]

Apple maps is undergoing a major upgrade. So, maybe they'll be a viable competitor?

Still missing some stuff though, like cycling info....