Is There a Possible Alternative to Google?
I started surfing the Internet in September 1997 when I was eighteen. At the time it took the equivalent of one hundred dollars a month delivered to a small local provider as fixed charges in order to connect, to which you had to add the regular cost of phone units.
With a link speed of 56 Kbps it was an outright theft but back then in my area you had no other choice.
At that time Netscape 4 was the top notch browser and the same was AltaVista for search engines. I really liked AltaVista, it worked well. It would give you results in just a few seconds whenever you needed a search to be done. Sometimes the results were inaccurate but with a little adjustment to the search string you could always find what you needed.
And then one day Google came and changed everything. It completely wiped out all the competitors and monopolized a market worth several million dollars where no leeway seems to be left either for existing competitors or potential new entrants.
Based on the latest data from NetMarketshare, in May 2010 Google holds 85% of the global market. Yahoo is around 6% while Bing, meant to become Microsoft alternative to the big G is nailed to a paltry 3%. What is left are crumbs, divided among Baidu, Ask, AOL and some other minor search engines.
In 2008, for a short time everyone spoke very enthusiastically of Cuil as a possible alternative to Google. Past the initial wave of euphoria it was soon forgotten. Today is used by less than 0.01% of the Internet users.
Itʼs even worse on the Microsoft and Bing side. Ballmer says that if you look at the numbers, their search engine is a success. Well, if the numbers are indeed accurate, I find it hard to believe him.
The unquestionable primacy of Google wonʼt change for a long time and perhaps, in the short to medium term, the company ubiquity could discourage potential new entrants to invest in a market that looks saturated not by a myriad of competitors, but by just one huge subject that absorbs all others.
If you are a nostalgic type, try googling AltaVista (funny enough) and take a look at the first result: “AltaVista Provides The most comprehensive search experience on the Web!”. Too bad it doesnʼt exceed 0.01% of market share.
Where do you see the search engine scenario going in the next couple of years? Share your thoughts!
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Try http://www.startpage.com/ (The reason will be obvious). Privacy and security will become far more important in the future. For as long as Google has existed I’ve used their Search for pretty much everything – on my pc and my phone (HTC Hero+Android/MoDaCo) however in light of recent concerns over privacy & compliance issues I’m seeking alternatives to Google. I found StartPage. I like it. Maybe you will too. Results are comparable to Google’s although usually with lower amounts.
With google agressive marketing, no doubt… I mean, google represents to internet nowdays what microsoft represented to O.S. in 90′s.
I recall Jason Calacanis saying on TWiT that the search industry is worth around 100 Billion dollars, and that each one percent of the market is equivalent to one billion dollars. If that’s true, then I’d say that the 6% and 3% of Yahoo! and Bing are pretty much a success even though they don’t seem that high. That said, Yahoo! hasn’t cached in on what they have in other markets, which is why they aren’t really going anywhere at the moment, but you really can’t say that of Microsoft as they are pretty much loaded.
I think Big G will continue to dominate for some time, but newer changes in technology might mean that ultimately the Big G might be be too sluggish to adapt where smaller, more nimble competitors might start to gain a foothold. Personally I am a fan of Google, but increasingly feel that a change is on the horizon…
Yahoo is basically Bing. It’s just a “Skin” wrapped around the Bing search engine. So you could see those together as a one market share of Bing instead of separating Bing and Yahoo.
I used to use AltaVista all the time, way back in the early to mid-90s there were no ‘bookmark bars’ in browsers and always found it much easier to just type ‘av.com’ in to the address bar (still works) than to look up the AltaVista bookmark. And if memory serves they were first of the big search companies to offer image search.
No doubt, Google is no1 search engine.
I remember Altavista, but with a different design. I don’t care if Google has the largest market share, and I think that the situation will not change soon. Cuil and Bing didn’t change the scenario, unless Google starts giving very bad results, why change?
Also netscape has a nice start page, with categories afair …
When I get frustrated with Google, I often turn to delicious…it may not have marketshare, but it’s all based on user-defined tags. The demographic of the user also seems to be more educated, tolerant, global. So for instance, if you want to avoid the racist stuff that comes up on Google when you enter a term like non-white, or even Obama, delicious is a great alternative.
I remember there was one called, myway? :lol: Well, I ended up with Google back in 2000 transferring from Yahoo!
The thing that make Google a success is also their products. Who doesn’t use one of Google product?
Antonio, why did u remove the facebook like button from single.php page?
Brilliant article! It’s funny to go back in time and remember how we use to see internet and what we thought about the future. Back in ’97 I loved using Webcrawler just because I really liked the little spider.
Thanks for sharing
No way ! Google has aggressive online advertising revenue source, which is much similar like Microsoft for Windows or apple for iPad. There is no answer to Google, at least now a days !
Uh, I have never heard of cuil. I just gave it a try and it looks neet.
Then it seems quite clear. Google is dominating the search scene and (in my opinion) is making a mess of the web search while the blog and image search are ok. I’ve always wandered… is there a search that finds the newest websites out there and avoid the old (really old) ones??
No thing is cann’t but I love google, it’s still fast and security for me
I am thinking on a long run, not just a couple of years: I believe this is just the beginning for Google, many things will happen in short time, more market share for this SE and so on.
Competition? Allow me to laugh. :)
It’s funny you should mention Cuil, I had a discussion with a friend a couple of days after it was launched and he was convinced it was the threat that google had be waiting for….0.0.1% market share is more of a threat to itself than google or bing.
Google is set to dominate for at least another decade – they haven’t even reached the pinnacle of their inventive possibility.
What was once ‘just a search engine’ has now, effectively, converted us all to it’s offerings.
As savvy web users & web developers, Google has us all sewn up with it’s offerings. For us, forget facebook, we’re Google addicts. The incredible momentum of Google has quite literally left us jaw dropped. To me, Google Earth is probably the most impressive offering of all. How do you compete with that? How do you compete with a company that sends out fleets of ‘google cars’ to present us with a product like ‘street view’ – it’s unprecedented!
It’s an internet Juggernaut that shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
The scary thing is, I don’t think they’ve even scratched the surface of what’s possible yet – Google is firmly in the driving seat, where they lead, all else will follow…
Google is an amazing monopoly. It doesn’t hold customers using compatibility chains and institutional, political brand marketing power, like Microsoft, or design and luxury scents hiding mainstream, mass produced products like Apple. It’s the raw, no-frills quality of the products it delivers, and not just the search engine itself but the whole Google world.
The application cloud Google has built in the last years is simply unmatched – there is just no competition, just alternatives of lesser magnitude.
A little, random example …
As web designer and producer, I have to manage webmaster tools: the difference between Google Webmaster Tools and the Yahoo/Bing counterpart is – brutal, no other words to describe it. Talk about a useful, quick tool set from Google, rich of exactly the information I need for my job. Yahoo’s Site Explorer in comparision has maybe a tenth of those information, and Bing’s version is laughable in his uselessness.
I’m not seeing any chance for the current names in the near future. I believe more in the unintended and unforeseen: some startup with a brand new idea and able to resist to the acquisition lure for some years. More or less, a brand new Google-like.
Has anyone already tried ixquick.com?
Does anybody know which type of video recordsdata are supported? I bear in mind the Intuition solely might dl 3gp utilizing opera mini. I downloaded the twist ap, maybe that is the issue? How can I watch videos from websites aside from youtube? Which file varieties? Normally I am given the option of 3gp or mpeg4. Cannot get both to work. Thanks for your time! Damn I wish I was eligible for the improve to EVO!
I think that with all the new innovations on the internet, something will eventually come along that will surpass Google.
Currently though, many internet users seem happy to forfeit their privacy in exchange for the vast array of convenient services that Google offers, so not sure if privacy issues have any bearing on the continued popularity of Google.
Basically people want what is most convenient in a fast paced technology driven world. Google offers the most choice in a very convenient all-in-one package.
Great article! Great comments!….Google is God period.
Google is king because it’s shoved in your face in every aspect, especially being the default search for browsers.
I do use them, and in some ways are useful, but I see a decline in being able to find what I’m actually looking for…other than in the “Top 100 Alexa sites” that are always in your face as well.
I’m just so sick of seeing them day in and out for all these years, if I wanted to see them I’d visit those sites and not a search engine.
I had enough of it and decided to make a change in the way people browse.
For a long time now I’ve been developing a new type of website index/search.
It’s http://dynaindex.com meaning a dynamic index. Index of websites, links, feeds with title, description, keywords and thumbnails.
Using my domain generator and website lists I seek out all live websites across the globe, grab all the information, locate and feeds, and take a snapshot of it. The permalink single posts is a feedreader of that sites discovered feeds.
It has a very advanced search and navigation system.
Is now 18+ unfiltered register to view. No kiddies allowed.
Although I did make a safe filter if desired to block the baddies from the eyes around you.
It’s on my temp server while making more additions but fully useable until on real servers.
I use several of Google products, and I enjoy a lot Google Earth, and Gmail.
However, I have started to find the Google search engine very frustrating, ever since they started controlling my languange options in search settings.
Only because my default language to view their webpage is English, Google presumes that the webpages I search for must be written in English. I usually search results in a different language, since my searches are very specific, but I certainly don’t want to view the interface in that language.
So, I have been looking for an alternative which will respect my search preferences, but still haven’t find one. I’m not into SEO, but I think that web developers don’t even bother to register the webpages with other search engines, besides Google. At least, I get that impression when viewing results from different search engines.
If you know of an alternative where I can have the interface in English, but search for pages in a different language (set as default), not English, please share it!
Ellie
I just noticed that Yahoo has changed the interface a lot, with great options, too, even for image search. It now has the sponsored results to the right, which is neat. I’ll give it a try to see the quality of results.
In any case, it seems to search in my default language, even if the interface is in English, and also provides “one click” after search in the entire web or the region I have chosen. Very nice. Google had something similar before. Too bad it was removed. It’s useful.
I just don’t get the ‘privacy’ point. They only use to show their ads to your computer its not like they are selling the info to anyone or using it for any other purposes. And if yahoo and bing grow then wont the same questions about privacy rise there? And one more point is that everything is automated when it comes to anything on the internet! I love google for search and all their products, gmail being on number two!!
Well everything automated.. But they know all they need about you? Can they control you what you will order? I sow on TV about advertising to children.. when they start crying and yelling in the shop…. well the advertiser have planed that!
And where is the free will? Will big G and other form us as people? And is that good?