restricting your search engine to only ~120 websites out of hundreds of millions (?) is basically giving up on the Web.
Sure - the web is now a cesspool optimized for advertising and attention. The traditional search engines made a lot more sense at the dawn of the internet when it was more about discovery. Now, for the most part, it's closer to an information retrieval tool, where a finite list of established sites have the bulk of what one is looking for. It only makes sense to have a tool that lets one navigate the established, legit internet, and not have to deal with all the crap.
That doesn't mean there is no use case for google as it is, but some more focused competition is a no brainer.
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Sure - the web is now a cesspool optimized for advertising and attention. The traditional search engines made a lot more sense at the dawn of the internet when it was more about discovery. Now, for the most part, it's closer to an information retrieval tool, where a finite list of established sites have the bulk of what one is looking for. It only makes sense to have a tool that lets one navigate the established, legit internet, and not have to deal with all the crap.
That doesn't mean there is no use case for google as it is, but some more focused competition is a no brainer.