Theoretically, upstarts can displace incumbents by using new technologies to offer an (initially) inferior but cheaper product to a larger market, as described in Clayton Christensen’s book, The Innovator’s Dilemma. Google Search soon became one of the web’s category-defining behemoths along with, for example, Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Gmail, Instagram, YouTube and Wikipedia.ĭominant web properties can decline dramatically – it happened to AOL and Yahoo, as Data Is Beautiful’s animated video shows – but most survive for a long time. Adding Gmail, Maps and the Chrome browser reinforced its power. More users and more money led to bigger indexes of web pages, more servers and faster responses, along with better algorithms created by growing numbers of super-smart computer scientists. Google’s prowess at search and its success at selling advertising created a virtuous circle. This was a bit of a jab at competitors, who were said to be “kind of exploiting the users to some extent”.

Google was also attractive because its home page wasn’t stuffed with advertising, and because of the company’s old motto: “ Don’t be evil”. I was an early adopter and often recommended it. I will admit that Google is generally the best search engine.

Duckduckgo search bar