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good god is this overdramatic. This whole thread is. Google is a good citizen, but people on hacker news just love a good story about tearing up big tech. How i

good god is this overdramatic. This whole thread is. Google is a good citizen, but people on hacker news just love a good story about tearing up big tech. How is society better off with google torn up? Arguments I expect and don't accept: 1. It allows alt search engine or alt browser to succeed. So what? The alt search engines and browsers are worse than the google ones. It doesn't benefit any actual people to have them rise up. 2. Google screwed my friend one time. Every single company (and person) on earth is guilty of this. One swallow does not a summer make. 3. Google is restricting this tech I like, or google is sometimes wrong about their bans. See (2) And so on. I haven't seen anything compelling in this thread, just a whole lot of hyperventilating. And to your point. No, search is not a wall of ads. But if you feel that way, literally change your search engine. It's easier than typing this comment you just posted.

ricardo81 6y ago
Google does have a great service, but calling them a 'good citizen' is a stretch, IMO. The events of celebritynetworth.com are a good example of why they've not been behaving as a good citizen (there is a thread about that on this forum). A good number of people have took up your suggestion and changed their search engine, DDG's traffic count continues to rise. The reality is that many users will use whatever is put in front of them, i.e. how many people use the URL bar of their browser for searches, or use a search toolbar for a specific URL? Google knows this well, hence their paying to be the default search engine choice and paying an amount that no other engine can match. Google's knows they are the best in class when it comes to general search, but to be sure they have been aggressive in ensuring that no one else gets a look in. The UK's CMA report estimates that an entrant to the market would require around £20 billion of capital to be a credible alternative, as in, a proper crawling search engine, not a meta search engine like DuckDuckGo. That's before paying the likes of Apple billions of dollars simply so that people will use "what is there". Having such a dominant position comes with responsibility, which is not solely Google's. The social networks along with Google are essentially the gateways to the web and how they present that information is important- and essentially only one point of view. Having room for more competition, choices, algorithms surely is a good thing.

ricardo81 6y ago

Google does have a great service, but calling them a 'good citizen' is a stretch, IMO. The events of celebritynetworth.com are a good example of why they've not been behaving as a good citizen (there is a thread about that on this forum). A good number of people have took up your suggestion and changed their search engine, DDG's traffic count continues to rise. The reality is that many users will use whatever is put in front of them, i.e. how many people use the URL bar of their browser for searches, or use a search toolbar for a specific URL? Google knows this well, hence their paying to be the default search engine choice and paying an amount that no other engine can match. Google's knows they are the best in class when it comes to general search, but to be sure they have been aggressive in ensuring that no one else gets a look in. The UK's CMA report estimates that an entrant to the market would require around £20 billion of capital to be a credible alternative, as in, a proper crawling search engine, not a meta search engine like DuckDuckGo. That's before paying the likes of Apple billions of dollars simply so that people will use "what is there". Having such a dominant position comes with responsibility, which is not solely Google's. The social networks along with Google are essentially the gateways to the web and how they present that information is important- and essentially only one point of view. Having room for more competition, choices, algorithms surely is a good thing.