[solso]

When the monopoly is strong as Google is, with market shares around 90%, and they use 20-30% of their revenue for 'user acquisition' (they pay to be default in any platforms: from Apple, to Samsung, to Telcos, etc.) Basically they suck all the oxygen out of the room so that no-one can fight them. One would have to spend almost as much as Google, if not more, on user-acquisition. Unlikely to happen. Regulation is the only way to even the field a bit.

DDG, Startpage and such, on the current instantiation, they are proxies to someone else search-backend. Does it serve for you (or anyone) to avoid using Google (directly)? Yes, of course, and that's actually great. Do they fix the underlying problem? No. Not unless a) they are building an independent/autonomous backend, and b) they get so much money that they can challenge Google on the user acquisition.

[fauigerzigerk]

Again, I'm not against regulation or breaking up oligopolies. There are good reasons to criticise various aspects of Google's dominant position. But I'm against doing it for the breathtakingly terrible reason that they are posting too many ads.

Breaking up Google wouldn't fix that, and we cannot take all decisions away from users based on the argument that users are somehow manipulated. This is a blanket excuse for taking away any and all freedoms and responsibilities from everybody.

If we regulate Google, it has to be to guarantee a level playing field and to prevent the abuse of a dominant market position. We shouldn't regulate to force certain usability preferences upon users.

[solso]

I think that if Google was prevented (somehow) to pay for user acquisition that would actually be enough to allow competition in.

They use billions each year to acquire users, even though they are a dominant market share. Why would they do it? They have the users already, and a great product by the way. Reality, however, is that are no really acquiring the users... they are just increasing the price so that no-one else can acquire them and start a "real" competitor.

[rubber_duck]

>I think that if Google was prevented (somehow) to pay for user acquisition that would actually be enough to allow competition in.

Wouldn't that (ironically) kill the largest revenue source for Mozilla ?

[ImprovedSilence]

Yes, that's why all dis-allowing it is a terrible idea

[RivieraKid]

Breaking up Google could easily fix the large amount of ads.

The market would become competitive again, so if Google 1 started showing less ads than Google 2, people would switch. Right now I'm not switching to Duck for reasons that originate from the fact that Google is a monopoly.

[fauigerzigerk]

>Right now I'm not switching to Duck for reasons that originate from the fact that Google is a monopoly.

And what are those reasons?

[RivieraKid]

1. Switching costs:

- I'm used to Google's UI (yes, Duck's is similar but I'm sensitive even to subtle changes).

- I would have to change my default search provider on all browsers I use.

- I would have to take some time to verify that Duck is as good as Google.

2. Search quality and features.

- After a quick comparison, Google seems slightly better at search. Another factor is that even if both seemed similar, switching to Duck would give me anxiety that I'm using the worse product because the prior probability that Google is better is high.

- Google has various little features that Duck doesn't, for example search for "pomegranate nutrition" or "trump age".

Google can profitably invest much more into their product than Duck, because they have much more users.

[majewsky]

> I'm used to Google's UI (yes, Duck's is similar but I'm sensitive even to subtle changes).

Google's UI also changes from time to time. When that happens next time, use that opportunity to switch since you have to adjust to change anyway.

> I would have to take some time to verify that Duck is as good as Google.

If you start using Duck, and you come across a search where it doesn't give you what you're looking for, just append "!g" to the query to get redirected back to Google. That made switching rather pleasant for me, knowing that the "escape hatch" is only a few keypresses away.

> After a quick comparison, Google seems slightly better at search.

It seems to depend on the person. For technical searches, Duck is usually much better because they embed numerous sources as Instant Answers (Stack Overflow, MDN, GitHub, etc.)

> Google has various little features that Duck doesn't

As has Duck, see above.

[retpirato]

DDG has a theme that makes it look like google. there's also stylus (NOT STYLISH, they track, & sell users search history.) See https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/07/styli...

[retpirato]

adblock can fix that anyway. Also see umatrix. it can block media/scripts/cookies/frames etc; from any source, on a per-page or domain basis.

[tikiman163]

When was the last time you saw an advertisement for Google search.

I'm serious, they advertise for other people, but nobody advertises for you to use Google.

Who exactly is Google paying for preferential treatment regarding search? Microsoft's default browser uses Bing, Apple's uses Yahoo. Android? Android is made by Google, and most phone manufacturers still swap out the default browser for something using Yahoo.

Google spends virtually no money on user acquisition. Everybody uses them because they have a track record of being trust worthy with email and providing the best search results and tools like maps and even free tools for finding the best flights all for free.

Also, an anti-trust lawsuit would require that they charge their users. Having 90% of a market that doesn't charge its users doesn't make them an oligopoly, it makes them a non-profit.

[sq_]

> DDG, Startpage and such, on the current instantiation, they are proxies to someone else search-backend.

Does this remain true for DuckDuckGo? I was under the impression that they used to be that way, but that they had switched over to using their own search backend some time ago.

[solso]

You can check for yourself, Bing seems to the the user agent... https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22my+user+agent%22&t=h_&ia=web

[brunoff]

wow, what a shame! i didn't know that. in their defense I at least try to consider that those may be old database entries, and newer ones would not be like that anymore, but ddg filtering capabilities are weak, making it hard to prove that point.

ddg doesn't have date filtering search syntax like google has, for example "before:2018-12-31", they offer only a few date filtering options shown on a combo.

[solso]

No, I would not call it a shame, and I think that no-one should either. In fact, what DDG does is admirable IMHO.

First, they do not hide that they aggregate. It's fanboys that tend to overextend DDG's capabilities, not them (at least for best of my knowledge).

And second, given the resources they have, they are doing more than enough, and they do provide a great service. It might not solve the underlying problem of privacy, but at least it helps protecting the privacy of those people using it.

To sum up, I do not think it's fair to bash DDG for aggregating.

[jldugger]

> One would have to spend almost as much as Google, if not more, on user-acquisition.

Why is that a problem? Wouldn't decreased profitability be the sign of increased competition?

[solso]

That's not a problem per se, it's just unlikely to happen because of the insane amount of the bill, and the roi is not that good anyway.

For instance, Google pays Apple 9 billion/year to be the default search engine (incredible but True). On the account of 20-30% to user acquisition that means that Apple users can be monetized by Google at around 30B/year (9B/0.30). Google is extremely good at monetizing people, right, a competitor might not be as efficient, let's say half. That gives you 15B addressable revenue.

Now the question. Would you pay Apple 10B to gain, at best, 15B? No one that crazy has this kind of money :-) On top of that, who prevents Google to pay 16B next year?

[jldugger]

> Would you pay Apple 10B to gain, at best, 15B?

30% APY Seems like a good deal to me!

EDIT: more seriously, you don't start with iPhone. You start outbidding Google on the margins where your budget constraint less a factor.

> On top of that, who prevents Google to pay 16B next year?

Profit margins. Google's budget is not unlimited, after all.

[scarface74]

On the margins are also where the less attractive customers are from an advertising perspective. How much are customers worth who are buying a Blu R1 HD phone for $70?

[jldugger]

Well then it's even cheaper to get started =)

[lossolo]

Google is paying to Apple around 12 billion for being default search, this is only to Apple, but they pay to Firefox and others too. So if you want to get those users you need to pay more, you also need top talent and the most important thing that you need is data. Data is the king and Google controls the kingdom. So to start competing with Google for real market share you need XX billions for start and you still will have small chance to win because you don't have Chrome, Youtube, Maps, Gmail, Google Analytics, Android and many other data sources. This endeavour is a huge risk with small percentage of succeeding. This is probably the reason there is no real competition. Market will not solve this on its own.

[zantana]

This! Can we settle on a terminology of what a search engine is? To my knowledge there is only one real alternative to Google and that's Bing.