My pet theory is that Google can afford to dedicate large amounts of resources to stuff like this, simply because there's no real competition to it's core product, which is a combination of search, profiling and advertising.
I do however believe that Duck Duck Go is the only viable contender who could realistically take on Google, not because their search is any better or worse (something which can always be tweaked), but because privacy is becoming a hot topic that non-techies are starting to wake up to.
I'm also reminded of when Google first started and the amount of developer good-will it received, which I believe had a huge contribution to it's success. I get the feeling Duck Duck Go has the same level of developer good will behind it.
As I see it, Google's business model is so wrapped up in profiling and tracking that it will be difficult for them respond to Duck Duck Go if it gains any traction. At that point, Google may see a serious decline in it's core revenue stream, and things like Android may not seem like such a good idea.
I don't think DuckDuckGo is Google's biggest competitor (are they even into the ad game at all?) I think their biggest rival is Facebook, hence why they went so far out of their way to make a Facebook clone. As amusing as it is to watch Google Bing themselves (create a clone of a rival's product and throw cash at it until it succeeds), I wish they would stick to their strengths. I'm about to leave gmail for good, over all this trash that they've been opting me in for. Apparently I'm now a member of Play. Good to know I signed up for that, too.
Google does user profiling and this means not only that they can serve better ads, it also means that they are giving users what they want, with queries being at least location dependent. E.g. when I'm searching for "Ruby", it gives me the homepage of the programming language as the first result and most other results are about this language too. When my wife searches the same thing, it gives her the Wikipedia page on rubbies, some stuff about Ruby's Diner, 1 or 2 YouTube videos, etc...
Of course I've noticed that this user-profiling is pretty dumb currently, but it's getting better. And skipping over privacy issues and the death of the long-tail, this is in fact what most people want and I also think that normal users do not care about the loss of privacy, unless they've been bitten by the side effects.
Then Google's own crawler can hardly be matched. Consider how web interfaces these days are more and more reliable on JavaScript. It's easy to run a headless browser and render a JavaScript-enhanced page from a script, but it's hard to scale that to hundreds of millions of web pages and workaround all the idiotic things that people do with JavaScript. Also couple that with the need to serve fresh news to people that want it, so the crawler has to be smart enough / fast enough for near real-time consumption.
Then Google's other services are complementing their search, stuff like Google Places or Google Maps. Personally I hate when such results are cluttering my view, but when searching for places (e.g. restaurants, kindergartens), people are happy to get such results straight on the first page. And btw, I don't know how they do search by voice recognition on Android, but it's a no-brainer to improve the voice recognition based on global trends or even on the user's profile - the point being that there's a lot they can do with the data and infrastructure they have that's out of reach for small startups.
Personally I liked the old Google better, but it's going to take a lot more than improved privacy to eat their launch.
> Google's business model is so wrapped up in profiling and tracking that it will be difficult for them respond to Duck Duck Go if it gains any traction
I disagree, Google could implement Duck Duck Go's unique competitive advantage in less than a week of coding if they ever feel it's really needed. Without any serious risks to its business model. Which isn't wrapped around profiling and tracking in any way. That's just a complement to what they do. They still can sell untargeted ads, which is already most of what they do. Have you ever used Ad Sense and Ad Words at all? That can still work fine without tracking a niche % of the population. And even then, there's other means they can get that information.
DDG's target audience are mostly confused users who are not really sure how privacy works and are freaking out over the wrong problems. It is in no way getting "developer good will behind it", most developers understand it's not a problem and most non developers, by and large, won't care. DDG will be stuck with the small niche audience that they can convince to switch out of FUD. Without any other value proposition (hopefully they do find one) they'll never have a significant share. Which is still ok, search is huge and they can still make a lot of money out of their niche.
If you think that, you haven't understood exactly what DDG's competitive advantages are. I for example am using DDG because I got fed up with Google collecting data on me to sell to advertisers. If Google copies that one they lose a bucket load of money...
Now maybe you want to make the argument that I'm a "confused user who isn't really sure how privacy works" - I would disagree, but it really doesn't matter as long as I have the perception that my private data is being sold off to the highest bidder and I choose to do something about it.
> I got fed up with Google collecting data on me to sell to advertisers
Sign up to any of their ad programs, become an advertiser yourself. Anyone can do this. Then try to "buy" this so called data they're collecting and selling. You can't, because there's no such thing. This myth of Google or Facebook selling your information to advertisers is really silly and very easy to debunk it yourself if you really want to. These are spread by either sensationalist tech bloggers who barely understand technology or by FUD'ers who make money off spreading this, such as DDG (who explicitly points this on their website).
> but it really doesn't matter as long as I have the perception that my private data is being sold off to the highest bidder and I choose to do something about it.
My argument is that you're a minority, which would make little difference if people like you could opt out (just like you already can opt out of social search).
And also that their model is not completely dependent on it. Google can still sell you ads if you're anonymous. Try google searching in incognito mode, you still see ads, Google can still profit off you. Their model won't magically disintegrate if an insignificant portion of their user base decides to opt out of cookies.
> Sign up to any of their ad programs, become an advertiser yourself. Anyone can do this. Then try to "buy" this so called data they're collecting and selling. You can't, because there's no such thing
Ahhh, now I'm starting suspect that you are the person that doesn't understand privacy concerns... Here's a description from Google's own page describing one of their services:
"With interest categories, you can reach people based on their interests and demographics. You can find interested customers, such as sports enthusiasts, and show them relevant ads as they browse sites across the Google Display Network."
Interesting. So, say I'm a fundamentalist Christian, and I don't want to rent my apartment to one of those icky atheists. Easy, I choose to only advertise to people that visit Christian themed websites. Awesome! Trouble is, atheists are now being discriminated against, without any chance of ever being able to prove it - gee thanks Google!
Yes, you are right, Google does not give out my personal info with my name attached to it. But the data does leak out and can have a nefarious real-world effect. I'd just as much rather that using a search engine doesn't open me up to that sort of thing.
Your example is really reaching far in order to prove some "nefarious" effect, as you put it. In order to make the case for some weird "ad-based discrimination" you've put yourself in the role of the ad-space owner AND the ad buyer which really doesn't make any sense. It's in the interest of ad buyers to show their ads on websites that relate to their product, plain and simple. I'd say that the initial assessment of you being a "confused user who isn't really sure how privacy works" is proving to be quite accurate.
I fail to see what Duck Duck Go has to do with Android or Google's strategy in other parts of its business.
Also. Non tech people are less concerned with privacy than you might think. As long as websites like Facebook thrive, people evidently do not care about their personal data. I myself are very privacy conscious. Probably comes with using computers and internet day in and day out. So far Google hasn't let me down regarding privacy. Sure, they're data mining the hell out of the things I do with their products but so far they didn't use it for any shady business - quite unlike others.
BTW. I really don't get the fondness for Duck Duck Go around here. It uses Bing for search and adds a layer privacy. So what. There is a reason why people prefer Google over Bing. It's because Bing mostly sucks. Privacy features don't make Bing suck less.
Are NBC and New York Times advertising companies? Does that make Steve Carell and Maureen Dowd advertisers? If you break it down by revenue, yes, but clearly there is much more going on than "Google is an advertising company".
> NYT is different as they are still selling a newspaper
Not really. As I understand it, ads are where newspapers and magazines make their money. The subscription fee is nice, but it is as much (or more) about qualifying their readers for advertisers as it is for the income. Take a look at the recent complaints about iOS magazine subscriptions including ads, for example.
The most likely competition to google is cheapening hard disks so that things like wikipedia, siri, and entire newspapers archives sit on your computer locally and so that you can do more complicated sql like queries on it.
A dump of the current revisions of all English Wikipedia pages is just 31GB - that's less than 5% of a 750GB, which are common nowadays.
But Wikipedia and newspapers don't really have structured data you can query; except for those small boxes and some tables, most Wiki articles are just a blob of text.
Besides, Wolfram|Alpha already gives you results based on structured data by answering more complex queries than simple substring matching, but I don't see anyone using them as a replacement for Google.
Comments
My pet theory is that Google can afford to dedicate large amounts of resources to stuff like this, simply because there's no real competition to it's core product, which is a combination of search, profiling and advertising.
I do however believe that Duck Duck Go is the only viable contender who could realistically take on Google, not because their search is any better or worse (something which can always be tweaked), but because privacy is becoming a hot topic that non-techies are starting to wake up to.
I'm also reminded of when Google first started and the amount of developer good-will it received, which I believe had a huge contribution to it's success. I get the feeling Duck Duck Go has the same level of developer good will behind it.
As I see it, Google's business model is so wrapped up in profiling and tracking that it will be difficult for them respond to Duck Duck Go if it gains any traction. At that point, Google may see a serious decline in it's core revenue stream, and things like Android may not seem like such a good idea.
Anyway, that's just my theory.
I don't think DuckDuckGo is Google's biggest competitor (are they even into the ad game at all?) I think their biggest rival is Facebook, hence why they went so far out of their way to make a Facebook clone. As amusing as it is to watch Google Bing themselves (create a clone of a rival's product and throw cash at it until it succeeds), I wish they would stick to their strengths. I'm about to leave gmail for good, over all this trash that they've been opting me in for. Apparently I'm now a member of Play. Good to know I signed up for that, too.
I don't see it in the same way you do.
Google does user profiling and this means not only that they can serve better ads, it also means that they are giving users what they want, with queries being at least location dependent. E.g. when I'm searching for "Ruby", it gives me the homepage of the programming language as the first result and most other results are about this language too. When my wife searches the same thing, it gives her the Wikipedia page on rubbies, some stuff about Ruby's Diner, 1 or 2 YouTube videos, etc...
Of course I've noticed that this user-profiling is pretty dumb currently, but it's getting better. And skipping over privacy issues and the death of the long-tail, this is in fact what most people want and I also think that normal users do not care about the loss of privacy, unless they've been bitten by the side effects.
Then Google's own crawler can hardly be matched. Consider how web interfaces these days are more and more reliable on JavaScript. It's easy to run a headless browser and render a JavaScript-enhanced page from a script, but it's hard to scale that to hundreds of millions of web pages and workaround all the idiotic things that people do with JavaScript. Also couple that with the need to serve fresh news to people that want it, so the crawler has to be smart enough / fast enough for near real-time consumption.
Then Google's other services are complementing their search, stuff like Google Places or Google Maps. Personally I hate when such results are cluttering my view, but when searching for places (e.g. restaurants, kindergartens), people are happy to get such results straight on the first page. And btw, I don't know how they do search by voice recognition on Android, but it's a no-brainer to improve the voice recognition based on global trends or even on the user's profile - the point being that there's a lot they can do with the data and infrastructure they have that's out of reach for small startups.
Personally I liked the old Google better, but it's going to take a lot more than improved privacy to eat their launch.
> Google's business model is so wrapped up in profiling and tracking that it will be difficult for them respond to Duck Duck Go if it gains any traction
I disagree, Google could implement Duck Duck Go's unique competitive advantage in less than a week of coding if they ever feel it's really needed. Without any serious risks to its business model. Which isn't wrapped around profiling and tracking in any way. That's just a complement to what they do. They still can sell untargeted ads, which is already most of what they do. Have you ever used Ad Sense and Ad Words at all? That can still work fine without tracking a niche % of the population. And even then, there's other means they can get that information.
DDG's target audience are mostly confused users who are not really sure how privacy works and are freaking out over the wrong problems. It is in no way getting "developer good will behind it", most developers understand it's not a problem and most non developers, by and large, won't care. DDG will be stuck with the small niche audience that they can convince to switch out of FUD. Without any other value proposition (hopefully they do find one) they'll never have a significant share. Which is still ok, search is huge and they can still make a lot of money out of their niche.
If you think that, you haven't understood exactly what DDG's competitive advantages are. I for example am using DDG because I got fed up with Google collecting data on me to sell to advertisers. If Google copies that one they lose a bucket load of money...
Now maybe you want to make the argument that I'm a "confused user who isn't really sure how privacy works" - I would disagree, but it really doesn't matter as long as I have the perception that my private data is being sold off to the highest bidder and I choose to do something about it.
> I got fed up with Google collecting data on me to sell to advertisers
Sign up to any of their ad programs, become an advertiser yourself. Anyone can do this. Then try to "buy" this so called data they're collecting and selling. You can't, because there's no such thing. This myth of Google or Facebook selling your information to advertisers is really silly and very easy to debunk it yourself if you really want to. These are spread by either sensationalist tech bloggers who barely understand technology or by FUD'ers who make money off spreading this, such as DDG (who explicitly points this on their website).
> but it really doesn't matter as long as I have the perception that my private data is being sold off to the highest bidder and I choose to do something about it.
My argument is that you're a minority, which would make little difference if people like you could opt out (just like you already can opt out of social search).
And also that their model is not completely dependent on it. Google can still sell you ads if you're anonymous. Try google searching in incognito mode, you still see ads, Google can still profit off you. Their model won't magically disintegrate if an insignificant portion of their user base decides to opt out of cookies.
> Sign up to any of their ad programs, become an advertiser yourself. Anyone can do this. Then try to "buy" this so called data they're collecting and selling. You can't, because there's no such thing
Ahhh, now I'm starting suspect that you are the person that doesn't understand privacy concerns... Here's a description from Google's own page describing one of their services: "With interest categories, you can reach people based on their interests and demographics. You can find interested customers, such as sports enthusiasts, and show them relevant ads as they browse sites across the Google Display Network."
Interesting. So, say I'm a fundamentalist Christian, and I don't want to rent my apartment to one of those icky atheists. Easy, I choose to only advertise to people that visit Christian themed websites. Awesome! Trouble is, atheists are now being discriminated against, without any chance of ever being able to prove it - gee thanks Google!
Yes, you are right, Google does not give out my personal info with my name attached to it. But the data does leak out and can have a nefarious real-world effect. I'd just as much rather that using a search engine doesn't open me up to that sort of thing.
Your example is really reaching far in order to prove some "nefarious" effect, as you put it. In order to make the case for some weird "ad-based discrimination" you've put yourself in the role of the ad-space owner AND the ad buyer which really doesn't make any sense. It's in the interest of ad buyers to show their ads on websites that relate to their product, plain and simple. I'd say that the initial assessment of you being a "confused user who isn't really sure how privacy works" is proving to be quite accurate.
I fail to see what Duck Duck Go has to do with Android or Google's strategy in other parts of its business.
Also. Non tech people are less concerned with privacy than you might think. As long as websites like Facebook thrive, people evidently do not care about their personal data. I myself are very privacy conscious. Probably comes with using computers and internet day in and day out. So far Google hasn't let me down regarding privacy. Sure, they're data mining the hell out of the things I do with their products but so far they didn't use it for any shady business - quite unlike others.
BTW. I really don't get the fondness for Duck Duck Go around here. It uses Bing for search and adds a layer privacy. So what. There is a reason why people prefer Google over Bing. It's because Bing mostly sucks. Privacy features don't make Bing suck less.
I would disagree that Google's core product is a combination. It's just advertising.
Everything else leads to that: search, profiling, Chrome, Android, everything.
You're confusing "product" with "revenue model".
Google's core product is advertising in the same way Microsoft's core product is selling CDs.
If you're giving it away for free, it's not a product.
The product is the advertising. It's the only significant thing they sell.
Are NBC and New York Times advertising companies? Does that make Steve Carell and Maureen Dowd advertisers? If you break it down by revenue, yes, but clearly there is much more going on than "Google is an advertising company".
NBC's customers are advertisers. The product they are selling is viewer's eyeballs.
NYT is different as they are still selling a newspaper.
> NYT is different as they are still selling a newspaper
Not really. As I understand it, ads are where newspapers and magazines make their money. The subscription fee is nice, but it is as much (or more) about qualifying their readers for advertisers as it is for the income. Take a look at the recent complaints about iOS magazine subscriptions including ads, for example.
It's all much of a muchness, but at the very least, Google's tracking and profiling capabilities are definitely a USP.
The most likely competition to google is cheapening hard disks so that things like wikipedia, siri, and entire newspapers archives sit on your computer locally and so that you can do more complicated sql like queries on it.
A dump of the current revisions of all English Wikipedia pages is just 31GB - that's less than 5% of a 750GB, which are common nowadays.
But Wikipedia and newspapers don't really have structured data you can query; except for those small boxes and some tables, most Wiki articles are just a blob of text.
Besides, Wolfram|Alpha already gives you results based on structured data by answering more complex queries than simple substring matching, but I don't see anyone using them as a replacement for Google.