“most of the sites back [when Google was created] were indie websites, which did not care about SEO and money and created websites for sharing information.” Th

“most of the sites back [when Google was created] were indie websites, which did not care about SEO and money and created websites for sharing information.” This is a very bad misinterpretation of the history. At the time, we’d already passed the inflection point of most websites being just for sharing information (that probably happened in 1995). Traditional search engines like Lycos and AltaVista were being overwhelmed by SEO spam. I remember having given up on most searches for anything remotely commercial. What made Google so revolutionary was that it worked around that with a very different algorithm that relied on incoming links and site reputation. Of course the spammers figured that out soon enough, and Google worked hard to stay ahead of things for a long time. But now what we’re seeing is that Google has captured itself in the SEO game, and the incentives to continue investing in providing a high quality search engine are mostly gone. Google makes money off of showing you ads, and getting you to click on ads, and getting you to use other Google services that show you ads. And the ads they sell are a lot smaller and more tightly controlled search space than the spammy web. And they are more concerned with who you are and what you’ve been up to than what you are actually looking for in the moment. I agree that Reddit won’t be replacing Google as a general purpose search engine, but eventually Google will become so user hostile that alternatives will emerge. It’ll just take longer than we want.