> true
I don't think so. Coding spiders and algos is no longer uncharted territories (here there be dragons) like it was with the first generation of search engines. And costs have come down combined with knowing what not to waste money on.
Everybody keeps saying the costs are too high to start a new search engine as if that was holy writ, but the reality is lack of will and the inability to see beyond the next quarter. It ain't easy, but it can be done.
Also, everybody thinks success with a search engine means getting as big as Google, which is a monumental task. That's unrealistic. It's more like take a chunk out of Google and stay in the black.
The key is more about Google's ad network dominance.
> Qwant
Qwant drove me off. It's been a year or two but Qwant's English results were just a retread of Bing. But what drove me off, is I would do 5 searches: (eg. journal apps windows, journal software windows, journaling software windows, best journal apps windows 2020, best journal software windows 2020) and Qwant would hit me with a captcha saying it thought I was a robot. This happened a lot. I'm not a fast typist and have never had this happen to me with Bing, DDG or Mojeek, so I ended my month long test way early and never looked back.
My conclusions:
1. I don't need that annoyance for a Bing retread.
2. Qwant had a lot of JS on the serps which slowed things down.
3. Qwant, in English, wasn't giving me anything I couldn't already get from DDG.
