Google search engine is unbeatable: We learn that in 2 ways this week

Google search engine is the default search engine for most of us and is therefore the biggest player in the market. Its dominance can’t be easily contested by competitors like Bing and Neeva. The latter learned that the hard way. Here’s what happened:

Neeva Search Engine closes shop

Neeva has announced its closing down its search engine on June 2. 

Before we learn about why Neeva had this unfortunate end, you should know the search engine came across a promising alternative to Google search engine because it was ad-free and more privacy-friendly. Also, showed visual elements and human-created information over the top 10 blue links that you see on the Google Search Engine Results Page.

Now, it offered this service behind a paywall. Well, there was a 3-month trial period after which users had to pay $4.95 (~₹410) a month.

Even with the promise of a better search engine UX, it had to convince people to try it. That was possible only if people knew or cared about changing the default search engine on their device browsers. 

Google is mostly the default search engine on various browsers or devices because it has eye-watering deals with the device manufacturers like Apple and Samsung (more on this soon). 

Also, we underestimate how spoiled we users are. We don’t want to bother with even the few steps and clicks it takes to read “Are you sure you want to change?” and select a different search engine option.

And so it’s like the company’s co-founders Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan said in a recent blog post, “Throughout this journey, we’ve discovered that it is one thing to build a search engine and an entirely different thing to convince regular users of the need to switch to a better choice”.

Google retains the default search engine position on Galaxy phones

According to a new WSJ report, Samsung has walked back on its plans to swap the default search engine on its phones. A few weeks back there were rumours of Samsung thinking of using Bing as the default search engine. But fearing the effect it will have on its relationship with Google and the market perception about the whole ordeal made Samsung continue its deal with the top dog in the field. 

For the unversed, Google has about 8.5 billion daily searches and covers 86–96% of the worldwide search engine market share (Source: Kinsta). It’s a key source of its revenue and with the potential addition of AI features, the Silicon Valley giant is likely to stand its ground.

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G. S. Vasan

Vasan is a word weaver and tech junkie who is currently geeking out as a news writer at Digit. View Full Profile