> Google still serves are huge portion of search traffic which pretty clearly is a good thing.
Hard disagree there, a single company dominating search is not a good thing.
Hard disagree there, a single company dominating search is not a good thing.
The alternative isn't necessarily "there's five competing high quality google search competitors".
There were some nice unique things back then. It also sucked a lot. By the standards of back then we're living in pretty much a utopia. We have devices that Star Trek barely thought of. Seriously, I have a tablet that can speak to almost anyone anywhere in the world, instantaneously, translate into any language (imperfectly), look up any information, access to an encyclopedia tens of thousands of times larger than the most complete ones of just two decades ago, the ability to find free videos teaching me how to do anything, and that's all just the tip of the iceberg.
If I were to talk to someone in 2000 and list the shit we can do in just twenty years there is zero chance they would believe me. And it's not like the internet didn't exist back then. I was on it, as were many others on HN. Those who remember, remember that it mostly sucked.
What we have today sucks in different ways. But it's also accessible to billions of people, which is billions more than back then. That "nightmare" you're talking about is fixable, and it's certainly not fixable by "going back" to anything. You know there were also ads back then and they were just as awful as today, right? There were just less places where they could end up.
That's not to say it was a better time.
If you told me in 2000 about the things you listed I'd tell you you're a slowpoke, that's obviously coming and most things were actually already there like SIP, ICQ, IRC, translator software, browsers, etc. existed on the smartphones of the day. What wasn't there was the adoption by the masses, but the tech was there.
IMO it's a failing of society not so much google that they don't have serious competition in this space.