> Who is actively working on this and what is proving so challenging? What is stopping us from creating a viable Google clone, with the same level of high quality results?
Search is hard. Organising the amounts of data that Google does is hard. Just look at Bing. Even with MS' resources it's terrible.
As for maps, look at Apple maps. Again, nowhere close to Google. There's also OpenStreetMap, Waze and probably others, none are quite on the level of Google. Definitely none can give you the experience of search -> navigation so quickly. Searching for and then navigating to a location on Google is just so much easier than the alternatives.
As for mail, at least there's tons of viable options there. Protonmail, Outlook, my personal fave is Hey.com (I hate email so their minimalist/focused functionality appeals to me).
Google got to their position by being very, very good at what they do. It's just a hard problem. Most other tech companies have tried and fallen short.
Search is hard. Organising the amounts of data that Google does is hard. Just look at Bing. Even with MS' resources it's terrible.
As for maps, look at Apple maps. Again, nowhere close to Google. There's also OpenStreetMap, Waze and probably others, none are quite on the level of Google. Definitely none can give you the experience of search -> navigation so quickly. Searching for and then navigating to a location on Google is just so much easier than the alternatives.
As for mail, at least there's tons of viable options there. Protonmail, Outlook, my personal fave is Hey.com (I hate email so their minimalist/focused functionality appeals to me).
Google got to their position by being very, very good at what they do. It's just a hard problem. Most other tech companies have tried and fallen short.