I don't like Google very much, but making it illegal to scrape public data enables way too much abuse, so this is for the best.
- 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.
Me, almost, too.
I have some friends using duckduckgo - not many and only until Google is the default again...
Even assuming no hallucinations, an LLM can replace some use cases for search but not all.
It did use Google to provide me with the answers though, sooo...
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.
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.
Does it show relevant snippets for each of the 9 URLs? If not, then it's as bad as Google's AI summary. It's not that rare that the reference disagrees with the LLM.
The value of the non-LLM search engine is that in the search results, you see the relevant snippet, and if you want more information, you know quickly which links to click.
Not saying there's no place for the LLM for many search engine use cases, but a proper search engine replacement it is not.
Sounds like you're saying that the LLM isn't any better than Google's LLM-created snippets. The claim was that Google has no moat against LLMs, and your evidence against this claim is Google's LLM generated content.
So what I'm saying is:
Google Search Results > LLM results
And yes, that includes:
Google Search Results > Google Summary on search results page
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.
If you want to know what the relevant pages are, you need a search index.
I can assure you that it is not. If you download any model off of huggingface, it does not also include an index of the internet.
That screenshot shows the model making a tool call to an external search index.
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…
The only issue is that the eyeballs stayed with the LLM, which allows it to hold a position that is potentially very powerful. This is particularly problematic with people who believe that computers are infallible.
But the user doesn't necessarily know anything about that, and they don't necessarily care.
If/when the time is reached when external search engines are no longer present in the LLM loop, it seems likely that regular folks won't even notice this shift. As long as the answer-making machine keeps making answers, they won't have any reason to pay attention to this kind of back-end minutiae at all.
It gets its answers from an archive of whatever used to be the Internet, and the last remaining publication: The Costco Flyer.
> How do we double check the answer-machine's answers?
That's the best part: We don't!
and maybe you really need the index and not the engine?
On the LLM side as well, I have not seen much people using Gemini vs the market share of Claude / Open AI.
The assumption of the long tail still using Gemini because it is bundled might be correct, but I am not even sure if that is something that Google will be happy with.
Maybe look into contributing to existing alternatives like PostmarketOS.
Let me revise that super abbreviated prognostication to hint at what I was really trying to say.
I think a lot of people are going to start to look at replacing Android and iOS, and some of these will be decently funded teams. Some perhaps not even based in the US.
Attacking the phone market used to be unthinkable. Not even Facebook could pull it off.
But now? I think it's open season again.
Even if the problems to solve are truly deeper than they appear, LLMs are going to give people so much energy to look past the difficulty.
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.
https://nypost.com/2026/07/22/business/reddit-news-outlets-w...
https://www.wsj.com/business/media/google-search-publishers-...
To which, I cannot say with enough emphasis: OUCH. This kills Google Search. All hail Cloudflare Search, the new center of the internet!
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.
Every competitor dies in the womb because "subscriptions are bs and ads are cancer" is totally normalized.
If you want Google to fall, start giving ad-loads or money to companies trying to compete.
But you can't be shit and also charge a subscription. There has to be good stuff behind the subscription.