What would it take for new search engines to succeed?

“As Google exists today, creating a search engine that could meaningfully compete with it would necessitate “[Building] a product that shows results at least as relevant, useful, fast, and cognitively low-load as Google themselves, then build a brand that at least tens to hundreds of millions of people rapidly trust and prefer to Google,” according to Rand Fishkin, CEO and co-founder of SparkToro, adding that the latter half is a more realistic possibility due to Google’s “continuing tack away from ‘beloved startup’ and toward ‘evil empire’ over the last ~8 years.”