[bachmeier]

> I think search will be quick. There isn't much stickiness there. It will be a disruptive S-curve, as soon as an upstart starts gaining traction.

It's unlikely that any other company will outcompete Google on search. What will happen is that something better than search will come along. That wouldn't be hard, given that today's search tends to return a combination of useless garbage and paid results. A better system will emerge - it has to, because what we have today is so bad.

[woofie11]

> It's unlikely that any other company will outcompete Google on search.

Why?

I understand Google has a big database, but note that we're talking products, not just technologies. A "good enough" product in one dimension can still disrupt existing products if it's better in other dimensions.

[gameman144]

I think this is the point; what we call search today is likely to be dominated by Google, but what we call search tomorrow could be dominated by a newcomer. For instance, map-based search is already a huge step above traditional Google searches for real-world locations and there's no reason to think there won't be more significant shifts in the future as well.

[woofie11]

What we call search was dominated by Altavista before Google. It really didn't take much to break that dominance.

Stable dominance is characterized by things like network effects or similar. Google, despite being willing to use anticompetitive tactics, hasn't really successfully built much of a moat.

Bing didn't do it since at the time, everyone liked Google and hated Microsoft, and Google was an epsilon better.

Today, Google doesn't have that do-no-evil reputation, and it's hard to know what would happen.