Google is not the only example, just the worst. Amazon sends me “you might also like” emails about a book I just added to my wish list, and somehow this is a genius feature…
Google are not unique in being a one-hit wonder where that hit was so insanely profitable, it has funded everything else, good or bad, and without it, 20 years later, they’d be screwed. That one hit is Google Ads (formerly AdWords) which makes what was once an extraordinary search engine a license to print money.
Yes, they have had real wins with Gmail, Chrome and Analytics, which are not profitable but tie people to the Google brand.
Yes, they also purchased YouTube which was a prescient and profitable decision, but it is only profitable due to Google Ads, just like search.
And they have had numerous flops, from their various moonshot programs (including cars and internet balloons), attempts at social media, and the lukewarm response to their phones.
Which gets me to apathy. Without Search/YouTube/Display Network + Google Ads, Google would cease to exist. Google Ads is everything. Search is almost everything. And they have decided to make some weird decisions regarding them, in that they have given up on core aspects of what those products require.
With Search, the only credible competitor is Bing, and Bing has always 95% mimicked Google, just a year or two behind, so are never a threat. Yes, they are slowly becoming their own product, but Microsoft is a behemoth so that is taking decades. An eternity in tech.
Google search results have been deteriorating, while still lacking enough competition for people to switch out of a 20-year habit of Googling something. The deterioration appears to be from lack of care. Forever search results have been inaccurate due to words on the periphery of articles, like in links to other articles, or words in footers. This should be an easily solved problem, clearly obvious to their engineers (I used to work on the Search Quality team, and literally told them as much).
Spammy review sites can also be easily solved with some manual intervention regarding those that get the most traffic, or by identifying patterns (like every single reviewed product has an affiliate link). Google doesn’t bother, and everyone suffers.
Part (or maybe all) of the problem is an obsessive reliance on algorithms and AI, which are still very far from replacing human skill and intervention. All they do achieve is being economical.
Everything in the Google empire depends on Google Ads, and Google has dropped the ball:
* Effectively ended customer support
* Automatedly suspending advertisers who have done nothing wrong
* Virtually no proper appeal process (except a token effort in Europe)
* Increasingly bad products
* Inattention to major problems
* Confusing interfaces
All of these are things Google has chosen not to address, even though they have $100B+ sitting in the bank.
They seem to have given up on their prime product. They seem to have let AI make the decision making. Perhaps the robots are taking over, already?
