from Hacker News

What If Google Wasn't the Default?

by rckrd on 11/15/23, 7:32 AM with 53 comments

  • by mrweasel on 11/15/23, 8:24 AM

    The fascination with Apple developing their own search is a little weird. That is not direction we'd want to go in. It seems that we'd be better of if the companies providing search was different from the device maker or operating systems and browser developers.

  • by uneekname on 11/15/23, 8:45 AM

    Google is quite sticky indeed. Having tried a few alternatives, I keep coming back to it because it helps me get things done the fastest. It would be relatively easy for Apple to switch their default search engine, but quite difficult to switch it to something better. That said I hope they do, and I hope to see more and better search engine competitors in the future.

  • by helmsb on 11/15/23, 4:00 PM

    I switched to Kagi and really like it. It really shows you what's possible when you're not optimizing for ads.

    Lots of cool functionality like:

    Lenses: Allows you to run a search to prioritize certain domains to give you a particular "lens" to view it through.

    Personalized results: Allows you to give additional weight or decrease the weight of certain domains.

    Search Bangs: Shortcuts for executing the search somewhere else like Reddit, Wikipédia, Google, etc.

    I decided to pay for it not because of the ads or privacy or anything else but because it allows me to make "search" work better for my needs.

  • by chrismorgan on 11/15/23, 10:23 AM

    > Gmail works best on Chrome.

    Is this true, and if so, in what way?

    > Google Docs uses cutting-edge features first (or only) found on Chrome.

    Such as?

    (I haven’t been a Google user for over six years, but back then neither of these were true, to my knowledge—if anything, Gmail worked better on Firefox due to significantly lower resource usage—and I can’t imagine what could have changed. Google Meet I’d understand, working properly depends on I think it’s WebRTC stuff Firefox still hadn’t shipped last I heard, but nothing that would be relevant for Gmail or Google Docs leaps out at me.)

    I know I’ve heard at times of Google doing inappropriate user-agent sniffing and sending a degraded experience unless your browser claims to be Chromium, but I don’t think that’s reasonable grounds for saying it works best on Chrome, when it’s deliberate/malicious (organisational malice even if no other form) and works just fine in other browsers if they just pretend to be Chromium in their UA string.

    Google has pestered and bullied and underhandedly bundled people into installing Chrome, but through most of the time they’ve made any claims about it, they’ve simply been lies, plain and simple. (Most commonly, they made a claim that was true at first, but were still making the same claim years later when it was no longer true but rather the converse in some cases.)

  • by gmurphy on 11/15/23, 8:25 AM

    FWIW, the initial versions of Chrome did not have Google as the default search provider - the first run experience had a dialog that made you choose between the top three search engines in your locale

  • by scary-size on 11/15/23, 9:12 AM

    > Increased competition in mobile browsers.

    Google is going to capture most of Safari's market share with Chrome. Users know Chrome, they use it on desktop, it's convenient to use it on mobile too.

    > Refocus on Android.

    With the iPhone market being what it is in the US, I don't see Google letting that just go.

    > Apple’s Search Engine

    Honestly, I think they just might do that. They have been moving the "service" direction for some time.

    > Chromium competition

    Microsoft would have made competition for Chrome if they didn't drop their own engine in favour of Chromium.

    The more cynical view.

  • by matesz on 11/15/23, 8:44 AM

    If potential antitrust case againts Google search would be valid, could it be mitigated with Google making google search as a platform?

    For example another company could run google search on example.com and give let's say percentage of that revenue back to Google?

  • by jiqiren on 11/15/23, 11:00 AM

    Google should be forced to spin out Chrome and Android and let each of them charge for defaults.