Google is confronting a threat to its dominant search engine as federal regulators launch an attempt to dismantle its internet empire in the biggest U.S. antitrust trial in a quarter century.
It’s also cyclical and deeply embedded in our society. It all starts with dominating the search space. Google chrome came along to cement Google’s stranglehold on the search space by having search and browser be one. Of their two big competitors at the time, google was paying money to one to be their default search provider. And any search not made in chrome on google directed users to download chrome. I don’t know how many people remember how google directed users to download chrome, but it was weakly implied you had to. It was an early example of a dark ux pattern. Then after google got a strong foothold in the browser market to dominate search more, they come up with the Chromebook and gun hard for every school student to receive a Chromebook. At the time a lot of us thought “oh good, now low income kids will have access to the internet while theyre in school, they can use that to learn things” and suddenly kids were growing up that chrome, the web browser, was the internet. And there were thousands of little steps over the last 16 years of google chrome that google has used to more and more deeply entrench themselves as all that is search, and all that is browse in the minds of users.
And I want to ask you this. When’s the last time you used their search product and didn’t have to struggle to find something useful in the top 10? Now the google front page is half properly labeled ads, 25% improperly labeled ads masquerading as results, 15% SEO bullshit that isn’t actually relevant or useful, just another advertiser showing their adds, and maybe one decent result. And what do you say when you want to do a web search? Even if you use bing or duck duck go or anything else, if you’re like most people, you probably say something like “let me google that”
We’ve gotten to a point of total apathy with google. Even if users are actively going to google for everything, its not even all that active from their perspective. They don’t know what else there is, and even if they do, their old habits are deeply set. They use google when theyre not thinking about it, which is most of the time, because that’s what’s already in their brains
It’s also cyclical and deeply embedded in our society. It all starts with dominating the search space. Google chrome came along to cement Google’s stranglehold on the search space by having search and browser be one. Of their two big competitors at the time, google was paying money to one to be their default search provider. And any search not made in chrome on google directed users to download chrome. I don’t know how many people remember how google directed users to download chrome, but it was weakly implied you had to. It was an early example of a dark ux pattern. Then after google got a strong foothold in the browser market to dominate search more, they come up with the Chromebook and gun hard for every school student to receive a Chromebook. At the time a lot of us thought “oh good, now low income kids will have access to the internet while theyre in school, they can use that to learn things” and suddenly kids were growing up that chrome, the web browser, was the internet. And there were thousands of little steps over the last 16 years of google chrome that google has used to more and more deeply entrench themselves as all that is search, and all that is browse in the minds of users.
And I want to ask you this. When’s the last time you used their search product and didn’t have to struggle to find something useful in the top 10? Now the google front page is half properly labeled ads, 25% improperly labeled ads masquerading as results, 15% SEO bullshit that isn’t actually relevant or useful, just another advertiser showing their adds, and maybe one decent result. And what do you say when you want to do a web search? Even if you use bing or duck duck go or anything else, if you’re like most people, you probably say something like “let me google that”
We’ve gotten to a point of total apathy with google. Even if users are actively going to google for everything, its not even all that active from their perspective. They don’t know what else there is, and even if they do, their old habits are deeply set. They use google when theyre not thinking about it, which is most of the time, because that’s what’s already in their brains
I actually say ‘search that’ rather than ‘Google that’
I’ve started saying ‘search on duckduckgo’. But I’m a weirdo so.