
Ask HN: Is it worth competing with Google? - eecks
After Google&#x27;s announcements in the last few days, it seems like they are leaving their competition in the dust.<p>They continue to dominate search. Bing seems to exist just to exist. There&#x27;s no viable competitors.<p>The new Google Photos (coupled with the existing Google Drive) pretty much kills Dropbox&#x2F;Box&#x2F;etc at consumer level. Can Dropbox or anyone else match the search power in the new Google Photos?<p>Self driving cars are fast approaching. Will anyone beat Google at this?<p>Maps will have offline navigation soon. Why use Bing or Apple maps?<p>Android is everywhere. Google Now and their new Google Now features look great.<p>Is there any space that they are not in &#x2F; won&#x27;t enter?<p>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.
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_random_
_> ... 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.

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fsk
>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
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.

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danieltillett
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.

~~~
veddox
and before Microsoft it was IBM...

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charlesdm
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.

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r721
Google News looks like a half-abandoned service - last blog post is dated
"August 27, 2014" [1]

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

~~~
andrew-lucker
If it is still running, then it at least has operational staff responsible.

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andrew-lucker
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.

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veddox
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
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.

~~~
veddox
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.

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notahacker
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.

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mzjs
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.

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ianstallings
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.

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kw71
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.

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samspenc
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.

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achow
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'.

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tmaly
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

