Not only that, but DDG entered after Google was considered “Unbeatable.”

Doesn’t matter, they don’t need to dominate, just stake out a niche and distinguish themselves from the dominant player.

Google brought to market a unique and powerful approach to getting the most relevant content to the top of the search results: PageRank. It was a good solution to a big problem with search engines at that time, and the difference in quality of results was obvious.

This reminds of one of the more memorable question/advice from Peter Thiel's book, Zero to One. "What's the one thing you can do 10x better than your competitors?". IIRC, the chapter was titled "The last mover advantage".