Ask HN: Is it worth competing with Google?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9633675

by eecks • 11 years ago

8 19 11 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

After Google's announcements in the last few days, it seems like they are leaving their competition in the dust.

They continue to dominate search. Bing seems to exist just to exist. There's no viable competitors.

The new Google Photos (coupled with the existing Google Drive) pretty much kills Dropbox/Box/etc at consumer level. Can Dropbox or anyone else match the search power in the new Google Photos?

Self driving cars are fast approaching. Will anyone beat Google at this?

Maps will have offline navigation soon. Why use Bing or Apple maps?

Android is everywhere. Google Now and their new Google Now features look great.

Is there any space that they are not in / won't enter?

My main point for asking is because I want to make a news website similar but not identical to Google News. If I made the site and IF it was a roaring success.. Google could just replicate it and because they have mountains and mountains of data they could probably do it better.

andrew-lucker2• 11 years ago

Google has a lot of data but proportionally fewer people. If you pursue your venture, you can put more attention to specific areas than Google will ever care to do. Find a niche and start digging a trench.

achow• 11 years ago

If you do a really good job, then the first thing Google would try is to acquire you. Google cannot 'engineer away' the loyal user base that you would have by the time you hit 'roaring success'.

danieltillett• 11 years ago

People said thing like this 20 years ago about Microsoft and look how that turned out. The bigger Google gets the slower it will become - it is only a matter of time before the next big thing comes along.

veddox3• 11 years ago

and before Microsoft it was IBM...

r721• 11 years ago

Google News looks like a half-abandoned service - last blog post is dated "August 27, 2014" [1]

[1] http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/

andrew-lucker2• 11 years ago

If it is still running, then it at least has operational staff responsible.

charlesdm• 11 years ago

Google tends to solve problems through engineering, rather than through user experience and design (unlike, for example, Apple).

The new Google Photos (coupled with the existing Google Drive) pretty much kills Dropbox/Box/etc at consumer level.

Google Drive, imo, has an abysmal user experience. Dropbox, on the other hand, is great (though it does have its own set of issues).

Android is everywhere. Google Now and their new Google Now features look great.

Android hasn't even managed to get scrolling working smoothly, after like 5 years. I've used Android devices before, and this is my biggest annoyance. That, plus getting lost in features. I just want stuff to work, which is the main advantage of iOS.

To answer your question: yes, it's entirely possible to make a superior product compared to Google News.

notahacker• 11 years ago

Google is fair game in anything whether the ability to provide customer service matters to an audience.

News is the other end of the scale: Google arguably could and should do it better considering how close it is to their core competency, but it's a lawsuit minefield rather than a cash cow for them.

_random_• 11 years ago

... kills Dropbox/Box/etc at consumer level ...

It takes more than just being better when you are late to market.

Self driving cars are fast approaching. Will anyone beat Google at this?

Uber? They are the fresh blood and moving fast in everything.

Maps will have offline navigation soon. Why use Bing or Apple maps?

I use Nokia Here Maps. They have offline navigation today. On my device. Which is not Android.

Android is everywhere.

Not on iPhones. Not on content-producing devices.

Google Now and their new Google Now features look great.

2015s version of Clippy. Predictive analysis is not ready. Beware of the hype curve.

Is there any space that they are not in / won't enter?

Their business is still revolving around ads. They are lagging in enterprise. They cannot beat Amazon at shopping. They cannot beat Apple/Microsoft at premium device design quality. They are not perfect.

PS: It's great that Google exists, but don't put it on pedestal.

ianstallings• 11 years ago

Android is killing iOS? They're going to make self-driving cars soon? Maps has won? No other search can compete? Google photos kills all the other ones? This has to be the most rose-tinted view of Google I've seen in a long time.

Here's how I see google's typical attempt:

1. Close but no cigar. 2. Waiting to be killed off. 3. Perpetual Beta (see #2). 4. Screw yesterday, THE FUTURE is where it's at. 5. Fall back to the search fortress!

And while Larry Page is trying to become a cyborg that drives himself to work, Sergey is off heli-skiing-board-diving to test google glass.

kw71• 11 years ago

All of the products that you mentioned have huge flaws, at least for my purposes. For me, search quality is astonishingly low, so much that I Yahoo/Bing/Baidu/Yandex now, except when looking for local businesses. I won't go into the other products that you mentioned but I feel like I have legitimate criticisms of them, too.

Maybe I am just different from the masses. If you think News is defective, then maybe other people will agree with you, but not enough to cause Google to want to copy you.

mzjs• 11 years ago

Yes, I think you can compete. Google has a core group of products (search, android,chrome, new products) in which they invest most of their time, and the rest has little or no development occurring. Google news fits this category, so you probably could compete.

fsk• 11 years ago

Self driving cars are fast approaching. Will anyone beat Google at this?

I never understood this one. What do self-driving cars have to do with Google's core business (search and advertising)? It sounds more like Google executives wasting money on a cool-sounding research project, than something related to their other products.

Self-driving cars are an interesting and important problem. I don't see why this would be something Google would be doing better than anyone else.

Regarding OP:

Making a news website is going to be HARD. Even if Google doesn't copy your site, why are people going to go to your website instead of Google/Yahoo/CNN/etc? It's going to be very hard to make enough money with ads to cover your expenses.

But it isn't going to be that easy for Google to steal your product if it's successful. One word: Google+.

nicholas73• 11 years ago

Self driving cars is a natural off-shoot of Google Maps. By pushing this standard, Google can ensure at least revenue sharing if they don't get the entire self driving car business. It simply adds to data consumption which they benefit from. No different from Google Fiber.

veddox3• 11 years ago

Yes, Google are still a very innovative company with some really clever people working for them. But are they invincible? Most definitely not. (Just look at history.)

Like most free web services, Google makes it's money from people's personal data. With an increasing number of people, that's a pretty unpopular business model. Especially in places like Germany, many people do actually care about their privacy - and Snowden has additionally done a lot of damage to the image of American companies in that respect. As a personal example, I have been virtually "Google-free" for over a year, and am doing great. I switched from GMail to another email provider, and started using DuckDuckGo as my search engine (which, in my opinion, is technically superior as well as more privacy-aware).

Even if every single one of their products was the most technically advanced on the market (which is not the case), there would still be a significant market share for companies who cater to people who do not want to sell their digital souls to Google.

chrismartin• 11 years ago

Can you explain why you find DuckDuckGo technically superior to Google Search? I tried switching to DDG a few months back and found that the results were less relevant overall.

veddox3• 11 years ago

I really like the "bang" searches they provide. I agree that their actual search results are not quite as good as Google's, but the ability to search the site I want straight from my browser search bar is brilliant.

samspenc• 11 years ago

If it helps, I sometimes wonder whether this thought crossed the mind of Sergey Brin and Larry Page when they were starting Google:

"Is it worth competing with Microsoft? Is it worth competing with IBM? Is it worth competing with Yahoo?"

In hindsight, it obviously was! But I do wonder what they thought at that time.

tmaly• 11 years ago

Search and Maps seem to be a core of Google. If your doing something outside of this then sure its worth it. Look at how often Google drops something. Google Reader etc

Ask HN: Is it worth competing with Google?

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