- Google search is on the way out. I don't know any of my peers who use it anymore.
- Coding models make doing extreme depth of work possible.
- Hoards of unemployed engineers now have access to 10x coding utilities and are looking for things to do. They will start clawing away at Google products.
- Just the other day, someone cloned Google Gsuite and it looked awesome
- Drive and Search will also be fungible products
- I'm itching at the chance to build my own phone operating system, and there must be thousands of others who want to do the same.
- Chrome can probably be replaced (Firefox gained a whole percentage point last month)
I don't think Google is safe anymore.
Two caveats that I'll give them:
- YouTube still has network effects and probably can't be dislodged
- Google cloud isn't going anywhere
What do they use?
Of all my tech friends, colleagues, I'm the only one who uses Kagi. Another person uses searx. Everyone else uses Google.
Of my non-tech friends and colleagues, everyone uses Google.
Even assuming no hallucinations, an LLM can replace some use cases for search but not all.
Imagine you’re in the car or hands free or disabled and you just want the question answered.
Such is the case for people trying to poison--ahem "influence" LLM results for "what is the best restaurant in $my_locale". You're playing a dangerous game.
Prompt: Who won the 2026 World Cup?
Answer: Spain won the 2026 World Cup, beating Argentina 1-0 after extra time in the final at MetLife Stadium on July 19. Ferran Torres scored the only goal in the 106th minute, coming on as a substitute in the 62nd minute. It’s Spain’s second World Cup title, having also won in 2010.
Prompt: Nearby BBQ places open now?
Answer: (a geolocation permission request prompt for the browser followed by) Right in [redacted] both [redacted] (4.6 stars, open until [redacted]) and [redacted] ([redacted]) are close and currently open.
A bit further out but highly rated: [redacted]
Seems like LLM does a good job on those questions…
It did use Google to provide me with the answers though, sooo...
Me, almost, too.
I have some friends using duckduckgo - not many and only until Google is the default again...
bear in mind we're on Hacker News. Google's market share is still above 90% - in almost any other market this would be a ridiculous monopoly.
Maybe look into contributing to existing alternatives like PostmarketOS.
No way this is threat to google. For the same reason why the same hordes of engineers did not managed to compete with large companies up to now. And for the same reason they were not producing all that many novel small apps last 10 years.
This is winner takes all economy. Tokens or no tokes, this is not the econony of small competing companies. This is the world of big ones.