07.26.10

DuckDuckGo and Quora: Two Companies That Could Wreck Google Search

Online businesses compete by being the default. You want to connect with friends, so you default to Facebook; you want to waste five minutes, you default to Zynga; you want to talk about stocks, you default to Stocktwits.

Google is the Big Default. If you want to find something, but you’re not precisely sure what, Google is where you start. For about eight years, that’s where I’ve started, too. But recently, two sites have started to replace Google. And what’s especially dangerous about them is that they’re both encroaching on Google, starting at opposite ends of the spectrum of services that Google Search provides.

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