Yea I really wonder why they don't have competition. You'd think a search engine built with java in the mid 90s would be easy to replicate at least to it's 2005 era standard using modern tech.
The unique value Google has is the mass of users who provide them with data, by clicking (or not clicking) their search results. It's the same way with most of the big websites - they wouldn't get to where they are if they started out today. But having all this pre-existing traffic is a huge part of why they're more useful than their competitors.
A lot of super technical stuff I'm googling at work all day I feel like is fairly static content that I think old school google excelled at. Modern Google is great for finding a local restaurant but not so much at figuring out the nuance in some searches.