It is definitely possible to be better at web search than Google, but it's going to be hard to make a significant dent.
A) doing websearch well is expensive
B) doing websearch well consistently over time is very hard -- if you remember when Google started, about every 6 to 9 months a cool new websearch would come out, and 5 months later would be garbage. Google managed to buck that trend, mostly (it still goes through cycles of crap results)
C) even if you have the money to do it right, and consistently do it right, you have an uphill battle of market perception. Users will perceive Google results as better than yours, as long as they're marked as coming from google: even if the Google results are perceived as worse when compared to yours without branding.
I think filtering out crap, without filtering out the long tail of esoteric content sites would be key to getting better results. But you have to be prepared to play a long game on marketing and user acquisition.
Bing has spent untold amounts of money on in-house development and buying up companies and they've barely made a dent. I'm sure there are various reasons for that, but it at least suggests that having smart people and lots of money is not sufficient to crack Google's monopoly.
Bing went after Google's center. The way to go after a dominant player is go after a market niche they are ignoring, then expand from there. See "The Innovator's Dilemma" by Christensen.
Yep, great book to read. Read it and you will see that:
- You can't just take incumbents out of the market at will, there are some external conditions that must be right;
- Not every niche is the same, you must get the correct one;
- That is a completely inverted way to think about the problem. You first innovate (or lay plans to do so), then you start looking for niches your innovation fits.
If somebody really wants to try to apply "The Innovator's Dilemma" disruption onto Google, it's not a bad idea to look at posts asking "and how do you expect to monetize this?" on this thread, and try to answer that question.
Easier said then done. MS spent billions and has not been able to create a competitive search engine even with many advantages over Google. It is the same with browsers and mobile.
A) doing websearch well is expensive
B) doing websearch well consistently over time is very hard -- if you remember when Google started, about every 6 to 9 months a cool new websearch would come out, and 5 months later would be garbage. Google managed to buck that trend, mostly (it still goes through cycles of crap results)
C) even if you have the money to do it right, and consistently do it right, you have an uphill battle of market perception. Users will perceive Google results as better than yours, as long as they're marked as coming from google: even if the Google results are perceived as worse when compared to yours without branding.
I think filtering out crap, without filtering out the long tail of esoteric content sites would be key to getting better results. But you have to be prepared to play a long game on marketing and user acquisition.