How to Tackle Google

Those who compete with Google are unlikely to succeed until they emulate what Google has done, not against money losing products, but rather take the fight to Google's main (or sole) profit source: search.

There are several examples to follow Firefox vs EI, Wikipedia vs all encyclopedias

First, let's see how Google operates. The Mountain View company has a core business: advertising. The only business that makes money therefore is ad-supported search. Google uses money from its cash cow to give away over forty different products. It is worth pointing out that the undisputed search leader functions like a utility/monopoly and as such has it has abysmal customer service and invests as little as it can on search due to its lack of competition.
If FaceBook got into the search business Google would put a lot more money in search R&D. Luckily for the Mountain View giant this is not the case.

While Apple, Microsoft and others fight Google on different fronts what we suggest is to take a page from Google's playbook and create an ad-free search engine modeled after Mozilla and Webkit. Yes, make search not just open, but also free of ads, free of the need of tracking users' every online move.

Surviving without ads or selling users to advertisers...

First, Apple could simply do what it did with Webkit, buy a promising search startup turn it into a nonprofit organization like Mozilla and provide it with enough funds to strive for five years. Then, users could make donations as they currently do for Wikipedia. In other words, Users could become members and pay an annual fee and not have to deal with ads and privacy issues.

This organization could fulfill the promise that Diaspora was supposed to in the social networking realm.

Apple could give it a huge boost by making it the default iOS/ OS X search engine. OEMs could participate in a profit sharing program which would be better than accepting a lump sum from Microsoft or Google. All the profit would be invested on improving search. The two goals would be: to be the best search engine on earth and to protect its users' privacy by not storing or tracking any information.