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Comment by ericd | Hacker News Reader

Which of those got Google to where they are? Apple?

I'm pretty sure there are multiples of movies made about Apple's journey that you may be interested in. As for Google, do you recall from the last 20 years any of the complaints about SEO fairness, AMP drama, Chrome monopoly, etc?

This feels like a bait question because the answers are so obvious.

I don't think any of those obviously match any of the categories that the parent comment mentioned. It's even less clear that any of them were central to the success.

indeed, all of these issues were problems only because they were already dominant

well, you are outing yourself as one who doesn’t recognize reality. now, if you are getting a paycheck from google, fine, feed yourself and your family. otherwise you’re a shill dude. live it, love it, waste the only life you have. your choice good for you. like heroin, but more profitable and not as fun.

All of the controversial stories about Google were long after Google took-over as the best (yes, actual best) search-engine.

Alphabet is an ad company that depends on collecting vast amounts of data. Search alone does not make money.

What do you mean? Search generates more money than the rest of Google together. Through ads, yes, but Google search could run ads even without the rest of Google. Nothing else Google does generates nearly as much ROI as search, just that they can't invest more into search since they already got the entire market there so they do other things like putting countless hours into optimizing those search ads.

google search is so personalized now, you only get best in class search if you log out first.

Chrome monopoly

How is Chrome a monopoly? Google made a good browser and customers chose it over other alternatives. Now you can argue that chrome isn't a god browser. But that's your opinion. People are voting with their feet. Does google have an obligation to make their browser suck?

Did they? Or was it because Google asked everyone who used Google search to install their browser for several years?

google took someone else's browser, put their logo on it and started advertising the shit out of it.

(illegal) data collection (in many jurisdications) that is now impossible to replicate is a major competetive advantage

I think it was declared legal time and time again? I'm familiar with at least a couple image-related lawsuits where they came out on top.

The bigger issue is that website owners have become increasingly hostile to crawling, and that's effectively closed the door behind Google, because that's when it starts getting more legally contentious. Which is why I think they should be forced to open up their crawl to everyone, so that we can have meaningful competition in the indexing/search space.

all and all. other things too, but companies naturally want to downplay the impact of those 4 factors

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