Google has no moat anymore.
- 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
> Google search is on the way out. I don't know any of my peers who use it anymore.
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.
Let me tell you about this new little-known technology that's been gaining traction in the last few years...
janalsncm
today at 8:32 PM
Sure, go ahead and ask the LLM who won the 2026 World Cup. Or nearby BBQ places open now.
Even assuming no hallucinations, an LLM can replace some use cases for search but not all.
Waterluvian
today at 8:57 PM
I tried both and itâs not even close which interface is better when it comes to answering a question. Google gives you stuff to sift through and interpret. AI just gives the answer.
Imagine youâre in the car or hands free or disabled and you just want the question answered.
https://ibb.co/whYmZWxs
https://ibb.co/JFkQbmJf
AI just gives the answer... which you then need to sift through and interpret as it's often wrong.
Google's UX is terrible - but a search engine (a tool that can put you right into contact with the FAQ or forum where actual experts are discussing your problem) is always going to be powerful.
Waterluvian
today at 9:30 PM
For sure. But a search engine the way we both probably agree is powerful is not Google's business. Google wants to own the interface level where everyday users come with questions/needing things and Google owns that experience. And that part is dying very quickly.
"just gives you the answer" is a problem when it is offered without context, sourcing, etc.
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.
Waterluvian
today at 9:36 PM
> is a problem when it is offered without context, sourcing, etc.
Sure. But that's not what's happening here, yeah? Both examples are providing sources. Actually I'd say that the LLM is doing a better job at that. You click a button and see 9 URLs to 9 news sites.
I think for the "influence LLM results" fears, it would be ridiculous to argue about which multi-billion dollar American company can be trusted more not to manipulate you.
Claude Sonnet 5 Medium more or less on the timestamp of the comment:
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. Itâs Spainâs 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 questionsâŠ
The LLMs I've tried don't do well with very new stuff. Like Zig for example, they tell me answers that were good for Zig 0.12 but we on 0.16 now. So I've got to feed them the latest docs, then do the AI dance.
Fwiw, I've done those kinds of requests before and it did so successfully.
It did use Google to provide me with the answers though, sooo...
Forgeties79
today at 8:58 PM
Whether it's a good choice or not sadly doesn't change the current reality. People now use ChatGPT as a replacement for google.
Really bad idea for a lot of search use cases.
> Of my non-tech friends and colleagues, everyone uses Google.
Me, almost, too.
I have some friends using duckduckgo - not many and only until Google is the default again...
SoftTalker
today at 9:00 PM
I've been using DDG for at least 3 years. Very rarely use Google anymore, and when I do it is when DDG doesn't find much and in those cases Google usually isn't any better.
> Google search is on the way out. I don't know any of my peers who use it anymore.
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.
> - 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.
Maybe look into contributing to existing alternatives like PostmarketOS.
https://postmarketos.org/
Please don't send vibecoders to established open source projects . Your literally sabotaging them if you succeed.
Googleâs moat is that websites arenât blocking their crawler.
rebasedoctopus
today at 8:24 PM
are your peers me, myself, and I? that is a wild claim. I'll start asking around but I don't think I could find one person that says they don't use google search anymore
> 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.
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.
amanaplanacanal
today at 8:41 PM
If only there were laws about antitrust. Oh well.