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Comment by csmithuk | Hacker News Reader

using a computer without Google products is something that people just don't really do anymore

This is rather naive. In certain circles yes but by far the majority of people use just their search.

Is there some particular reason to exclude that? Because most of those people who 'just' use their search use their search a lot.

Yes because it is instantly replaceable with nothing more than a meh on the part of the user.

So many people will be so happy to learn how easily people will give up google search. Maybe that's the secret that got Nadella the job? He knows he just has to ask people nicely and they'll all use Bing. No more spending hundreds of millions of dollars on ad campaigns, silly Balmer.

Not suggesting Bing. I'm only suggesting "not Google".

Times change. Google's core business doesn't.

People use Google-search because it's the default in all browsers.

That's why Google is still paying Mozilla money to make it the default in Firefox and it's why Google made Android and Chrome to be able to control what web-services people use by default, also on their mobile devices.

If the defaults switch from Google, most people wont notice. If you have any doubts about that, observe all people which has their search hijacked by malware.

Their search page has been diverted to a scummy non-Google page and nobody notices that anything is wrong.

Google definitely has a strong hold on the web, but they're a lot more fragile than you think.

And most people used Windows in the late 90s/early 2000s because Microsoft effectively paid every single OEM to do so and locked them in to restrictive covenants against shipping anything else. For the purposes of comparison it doesn't really matter why everyone uses their products, all that matters is that they do.

I'm not really sure on what you're judging my thoughts on their fragility. I made a pretty simple claim, that the vast majority of people use something Google made regardless of who made their OS. Could someone topple them out of that? Of course. Just like someone toppled Microsoft and IBM before them. It will cost a boatload of money, but someone will eventually do it.

I just don't see how an arbitrary exclusion refutes the claim, or what relevance it has to the price of rice in china. It'd be like saying "Not everyone uses a Microsoft product every day because Windows doesn't count" in 1999. Well... ok then.

But there isn't brand loyalty with free web products. Users are fickle. I happily used AltaVista, Yahoo! and Lycos before moving to this weirdly named Google thing. I happen to use it because it is the default but change the default (without asking) and eventually people won't mind. Having said that, I do find Bing awkward, so perhaps I do use Google out of necessity, but not loyalty.

If Lycos was the last thing you used before switching to google that means that it's been probably about 13-15 years since you switched. On the web that's an eternity. If that's fickle then Google must be pretty happy to have its users be so fickle.

Haha good point

I used Altavista to the last to be honest. I used to have an email account with Altavista, then had to go to Hotmail after they closed, then GMail when it was brand new (fortunate enough to have an invitation from someone). I only used Lycos for their FTP search.

This is rather naive. In certain circles yes but by far the majority of people use just their search.

So you are saying a vast majority of people don't use gmail, google maps, or youtube. I'd venture to guess a vast majority of people use at least one of those things on a regular basis.

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