Originally they were indeed quite a good search engine amidst a sea of less good ones, in part because their tech was simply better, in part because they weren'

Originally they were indeed quite a good search engine amidst a sea of less good ones, in part because their tech was simply better, in part because they weren't as-yet merged with an advertisement company. Like Page and Brin put this up themselves as a reason why their contemporary competitors sucked[1]. Though their subsequent en-shittening has been in a relative competitive vacuum, really Bing sometimes with different front-ends. I think today their main sticking power is how integrated they are. Not just with their browser, but the search engine with maps and what have you. Like if you build a search engine that just does internet search, users are confused why it can't tell them local restaurants' opening hours. [1] http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf Appendix A