Google was 10X better than alternatives when it was created and for a long time thereafter, but it's definitely not 10X better than Bing now. Google is not as dominant in other markets as the US.

It's interesting that your respect toward google doesn't extend to their decision to pay apple. I suspect google, being as good as they are with data, wouldn't pay apple if it didn't make sense.

End users just don't always notice or care. Most search engines are reasonably good at returning results for basic queries. As long is it's "good enough" most people don't even notice they have a choice and make the switch. Sure, you and I do, but as another poster said the HN demographic isn't the norm here.

I agree people choose Google, but at this point I expect I could switch search engines on a 100 people's phones, and you'd end up with a few categories:

1. People who don't even notice the change 2. People who notice, but are too lazy or ignorant to change it 3. People who notice, put off changing it, and leave it 4. People who notice, but consider searching results a commodity product at this point and don't care 5. People who notice, have a real preference AND actually change it back

Obviously I'm too lazy to write all of the possibilities, but I find the differences in search engines to be less and less noticeable at this point. Of course, I have no actual expertise in search engines beyond personal experience so this is just me typing on the internet.

You're right in that Google didn't just accidentally become the "search engine of choice for the Internet", but wrong in that "people chose to use it".

Google started with paying other software companies to bundle Google Toolbar in with their software, which would change your default search to Google. (This behavior was later changed to Google Chrome, which you still get with a dozen other programs today.) This is actually a big part of Sundar Pichai's claim to fame at Google, and likely chiefly why he is CEO today: He's responsible for Google being the default place for search.

As noted in this article, Google has been paying to be default on the iPhone for years, and Google used to be the highest bidder for Firefox's default search spot as well (and still is in several other countries besides the US).

People use the default, and Google invested an incredible amount of money in ensuring they were the default everywhere. Google has been the default in both Chrome and Firefox for many years, and used the Toolbar to change people's default in IE, and has also been the default on both iOS and Android mobile phones. And that is why Google has the market share it does today.