Yes,These days most people think that GOOGLE=INTERNET and look on GOOGLE for the nearest hotel or ask GOOGLE today's weather. Google has basically become so big that for most people Google is the manifestation of the internet.
This reliance on web search as a gateway to the internet also started with google as in the days of IE we had separate URL bars and search bars, toolbars and bookmark tabs were the norm and there were many different ways people used to obtain their news,talk to friends and in general consume content on the internet.
But Google basically turned the browser into a funnel that sends all internet users to https://google.com and as chrome has most market-share in both desktop and mobile(thanks to android). Most browsers adopted the SEARCH-ENGINE route in their browsers leading to the position we are in.
Today the average person visits a website only in two ways
1.Auto-fill on their URL...sorry search bar
2.Type the name of the website on the google search engine.
I have no clue why the feds don't care about big tech monopolies the way Microsoft was attacked back then for IE which is basically child's play compared to what companies(even Microsoft with Edge) are doing today.
> I have no clue why the feds don't care about big tech monopolies the way Microsoft was attacked back then for IE which is basically child's play compared to what companies(even Microsoft with Edge) are doing today.
People forget just how big Microsoft was at the time (big fish/small pond) but it was some obscenely high percentage of "personal computer desktops", and even then it took something like four or five years to come to trial. This was before Android, before smart phones at all, and the Mac was on life-support and nearly dead, and Linux was a joke as a desktop which is where the "Year of Linux" came from.
Google is big but nowhere near as "dominant" and they've been careful to mitigate so as to fly under the radar. It also helps that basically nobody is trying to sell software in the areas they "compete" in so the "harm" is harder to argue.
I wonder about whether Apple has a skunkworks project working on search, just like they did for the x86 and M1; it's one of the large areas they still directly depend on another company for.
> Google basically turned the browser into a funnel that sends all internet users to https://google.com
It's two multi-layer funnels [0]:
- Android device > Android OS > Chrome > Google search/ads
- Apple device > macOS/iOS > Safari/Chrome > Google search/ads
> These days most people think that GOOGLE=INTERNET
Definitely not the case in some countries. I am confident that there are a good number of failing democracies where you could easily conclude that FACEBOOK=INTERNET. I have deep knowledge of one where this is very apparent, to those in that country who stop to think and care.
This reliance on web search as a gateway to the internet also started with google as in the days of IE we had separate URL bars and search bars, toolbars and bookmark tabs were the norm and there were many different ways people used to obtain their news,talk to friends and in general consume content on the internet.
But Google basically turned the browser into a funnel that sends all internet users to https://google.com and as chrome has most market-share in both desktop and mobile(thanks to android). Most browsers adopted the SEARCH-ENGINE route in their browsers leading to the position we are in.
Today the average person visits a website only in two ways
1.Auto-fill on their URL...sorry search bar 2.Type the name of the website on the google search engine.
I have no clue why the feds don't care about big tech monopolies the way Microsoft was attacked back then for IE which is basically child's play compared to what companies(even Microsoft with Edge) are doing today.