The HN discourse towards Google Search has been been very negative the last few years, and I never see HN users giving Google credit for:
- It's often the #1 source of referral traffic for many businesses.
- The value of the ecosystem built on the back of Google Search is probably in the same ballpark, if not higher than Google's own market cap ($1T+).
- The value of the ecosystem built on Google Search is probably higher than the value of the ecosystem built on every other platform combined - YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, etc.
- It's one of the few ways startups can compete with incumbents.
Does it have problems? Yes.
Could it be better? Yes.
My concern is that if Google Search fundamentally changes and sends less traffic to businesses, is calcifies incumbents and makes it harder for new upstarts to get traction with better products.
An example might be invoicing or accounting software. If new upstarts can't leverage search to grow, everybody is just going to use Quickbooks - forever.
Just want to point out that people hype social media because they not uncommonly make tools for social media as the market for it was hot across a huge variety of demographics. Search engines and email can be amazing, but it hinges heavily on your industry.
So I’m curious what the parameters may be - they advertise on Bing, does that help? Or was the input drawn from my personal history or location (near their office)?
How will AIO differ from current SEO?
So in answering a question, it also still uses the wider dataset. The references aren’t necessarily the source of the whole answer.