Will There Ever Be a Search Engine Better Than Google?

[SheungWan]

For those who are actually interested in search engines as a subject have a look at http://searchenginewatch.com One search engine which has very useful features is copernic and although now it has moved to pay-for facility, copernic tracker is something worth looking at: http://www.copernic.com/

Edited February 14, 2015 by SheungWan

[Gonsalviz]

Not if the Europeans have anything to say about it.

[Gonsalviz]

I remember when Altavista was the one an trusted search engine and Yahoo provided hierarchical method to find what we were looking for. At the same time AOL provided it's own 'internet' to it's users. Major companies come and go.

Normally I would agree with this ... however, looking at past OS battle, when the dust settled, there was only one standing, Microsoft and they continue to dominate the OS market for PCs. They also won the business application market and we no longer use or talk about Lotus 123 or WordPerfect.

I think Google might be like Microsoft as search engine is fairly mature market at this point that was fought by various competitors.

PCs ? what are they.?

i think it is baidu from china that will win eventually https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baidu

when you have the population you will sooner or later have the dominance in this fast moving world

Until the Europeans find out about it. Then they will out law it too.

[nikster]

Google search has two components: Search (accuracy), and delivery (speed).

In search. It's good, and it was certainly much better than its predecessors - I remember using Excite and it was just utter garbage, completely overrun by spam. Google came along and just worked.

However, search could be done much better and eventually a company will come along to do that; most recently there were major advances in artificial intelligence, and amongst many things this holds great promise in improving search. A new AI based search engine could easily blow Google out of the water. Google is of course investing lots of money in AI itself, so Google might be disrupting its own engine with a new AI-based version. Still it's a chance for others.

In delivery, Google is ridiculously fast. That's a high barrier to entry, not uncrackable but I don't see anyone doing this quickly. Google is so fast, it constantly amazes me. You can see it any time you start typing in the search field - it seems to instantly pop up with auto complete options. Faster than that should be possible. Millions (really?) of servers and all that infrastructure they have are behind that.

[Guest]

Google search has two components: Search (accuracy), and delivery (speed).

Exactly, those are the most wanted components.

As you did mention, the AI behind is the key to provide the best results to us. While I'm also amazed, like you, how well Google is able to predict when I do a basic search. I have been more and more dissatisfied how google tries to decide what kind of results I'm looking for.

What I'm afraid is, that Google works like Facebook feed, then I'll only get the 'smooth and lovely answers', which I'm not too interested of. I want to see the controversies between ideas so that I'm able to make my own decision.

If the offered results from Google search are going to be more pre-defined by my own thoughts, instead of being fair representation of what are facts and what people somewhere else might thing, I'll have to find another, more honest, search engine to fill my needs.

[Xircal]

I like Google primarily because of the number of filters it has. However, it tends to display its own preferred results first regardless of the search string used. Needless to say, this has brought it to the attention of the EU Competition Commission: http://www.magazinemedia.eu/wp-content/uploads/14-09-04-Publishers-Response-on-Third-Set-of-Commitments.pdf

Also, I don't think you can classify Google as a search engine anymore. It's primary function is to sell advertising space and the search utility is a sideline to that.

In addition, even if you clear your history and delete the cache when you've closed your browser, Google still retains details of everything you searched for forever unless you delete it yourself as I pointed out in my post here: http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/793795-what-google-knows-about-you/ I suggest you right click this link and choose "Open in a new tab" since the site doesn't do that automatically for forum posts)

Although Google encrypts data, the possibility still exists that your search terms could become public if a leak occurred. An example of that concerns AOLs leak of 650,000 data entries back in 2006. Because the leak has become public, you can now search them yourself. All you need to do is to enter a search string and then when the results appear, click "User ID". This will reveal what that person searched for. http://www.not-secret.com/

Lots of users, myself included don't tend to view the results beyond the first ten pages. Although one of Google's filter's allows you to make a custom search between two dates, it requires input and make take several attempts before you achieve the desired result. A way around that is to use this search engine which allows you to remove up to the first one million results: https://millionshort.com/

And if you really want to go back in time, there's always the good old Wayback Machine: https://archive.org/web/web.php

[nikster]

Google search has two components: Search (accuracy), and delivery (speed).

Exactly, those are the most wanted components.

As you did mention, the AI behind is the key to provide the best results to us. While I'm also amazed, like you, how well Google is able to predict when I do a basic search. I have been more and more dissatisfied how google tries to decide what kind of results I'm looking for.

What I'm afraid is, that Google works like Facebook feed, then I'll only get the 'smooth and lovely answers', which I'm not too interested of. I want to see the controversies between ideas so that I'm able to make my own decision.

Good point - the Facebook feed is the best example of how an interest-based suggestion system totally backfires. My FB feed is useless, and it's like that for most people. I've set it to "most recent" thinking it would then show me the most recent posts - but it doesn't! It still tries to guess which friends I have the best connections with (and supposedly want to know the most about). And then because those are the only ones I see, I like some, and that re-enforces the bubble even more.

Google is not quite as bad but they keep trying to do this, and I keep trying to turn it off. Anonymized browser window works OK. But I generally agree Google results aren't all that great - even if not personalized, they are still the result of a feedback loop, a kind of "winner takes it all" idea, and many interesting things won't even show up.