Yes whenever I use Bing (by accident) I'm instantly reminded of those "search engines" that came with crappy toolbars bundled in shady freeware installers. Same goes for any "crowded" search engine.
I guess Bing is also a complete mess too because it has no coherence in its UI. Maybe google will be better in that regard, because Bing is hard to beat, but yeah...
That is certainly the "legend" of how they succeeded. I honestly think it was less about having a clean homepage than it was a single text input for searches. That said, hard to view any story on how they "won" as much more than a "just so" story. :(
- Google predates widespread U.S. broadband, and even early DSL was not too fast. So cutting bytes made a real difference.
-Search was not baked into the browser (search bar etc) so homepage speed really mattered
-It was memorable branding, it clearly marked Google as more focused on quality search vs Yahoo et al who were trying to be "portals" with news and listings and so forth -- no one else understood how important search was, that it could be exponentially better and a differentiator
At least among nerds who were early adopters, this was an oft cited reason for their personal enthusiasm about Google versus incumbent search engines. Of course quality of results was paramount, but the spartan homepage definitely drove that segment of early success. The theory that tech adoption promoted more mainstream adoption may be more “just so”, I think that’s harder to validate (but given the adoption of computers and internet at the time, it’s probably at least partially true).
By far the biggest reason was that the results were soooo much better. All of the other search engines basically used some variation of keyword matching in the document itself, which is why you'd see so many pages back in that time that were loaded with superfluous keywords. It was Google's original PageRank incarnation that made all the difference early on.
It was definitely an important reason for early adoption (just remember how chaotic altavista and yahoo looked). That and good results. When they were funded there was some chatter that the things that made them good would go away.
On screen-sharing I see my clients open new browser tabs to an eye-gouging mess of homepage widgets. News, weather, things a pop singer said today... they see this 50 times a day?
I think it needs to be combined with some judgement what you want to become also. If you just go by numbers, you can end up with something that makes more money for some time, but that people stops caring for. And then it will go downhill. Google's uncluttered start page was part of their brand, their legacy and origin. If they sell that out, we know there is no soul left.
Edit: When Google IPO'd, the offer was for $2,718,281,828 worth of stock. That was a signal about who was in charge and it colored the company's identity.
We already did this experiment in the 90s, it sucked. The only reason the outcome would be different this time is because there's no viable Google competitor that can swoop in and rescue users from this garbage.
I don't see it as a law of nature that "Google" has to have a plain search field forever. The world around it changes.
Back in the 90s Google proved you could make "all" available better via search than the Yahoo catalog a d thus became the landing page.
Nowadays the pure search bar is integrated into the browsers addressbar and Google as starting page has been replaced with Twitter/X, Reddit, news sites, .. and Google has to find something to become the start page again.
I love how "experiments" are now "how things used to be in the bad old days and people hated it and we won the search engine market partly because we didn't do that but uh maybe it's time to try again"
Things have changed a LOT . The vast majority of Google users never even see the home page since it's integrated into the address bar of all mainstream browsers. So I guess they might as well use it for something other than pure search.
I'd love to use Kagi, but honestly the price point is just too high. at $120 a year vs Google for free sadly I'm still going to choose Google. I would be willing to pay something in the region of $3-5 a month
I don't know if the price is too high, but the limits are too low. I can't deal with niggling thought that I might exceed the query limit -- every time I'd be thinking about whether I'm going to have to do another query because I made a typo or didn't pick the right search terms.
I really wish there was an app to keep up with news that will actually have an impact on me like extreme weather, changes to the tax code, and significant changes to the economy.
Such a service could only work as advertised if it were run by a benevolent dictator with a zealous aversion towards anyone changing the product to include stories that tell you "that's a good thing" or "X group most affected" or "top 10 reasons men love hairy women" or "the science is settled". Otherwise, I can picture such a service declining rapidly.
News are free. You’re not the customer. People pay journalists to make people aware of some information. Entire countries own news agencies. This is what power is.
I like Blind, but let’s be real - if Blind was to be believed, then the next round has already been in the process of being decided on since at least April.
Kinda similar to how we had “the next recession is about to happen any second” since at least 2015.
When you can initiate a search directly from the address bar, what should the role of a "homepage" be? It's reasonable that there should be some "zero click" attempt and content that would be useful.
If this is instead used like the typical chumbox content, that would be a real disappointment. Google would also be shooting itself in the foot if it added a bunch of distractions to the page just as they were poised to realize a intelligent assistant capability (which would benefit from having as clean and interface as they had when they launched web search).
Readit News
They've had to give up the latter, so might as well dump the former too.
I guess Bing is also a complete mess too because it has no coherence in its UI. Maybe google will be better in that regard, because Bing is hard to beat, but yeah...
- Google predates widespread U.S. broadband, and even early DSL was not too fast. So cutting bytes made a real difference.
-Search was not baked into the browser (search bar etc) so homepage speed really mattered
-It was memorable branding, it clearly marked Google as more focused on quality search vs Yahoo et al who were trying to be "portals" with news and listings and so forth -- no one else understood how important search was, that it could be exponentially better and a differentiator
All of the other search engines just had a single text input for searches, too, e.g. https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/altavista-2000
By far the biggest reason was that the results were soooo much better. All of the other search engines basically used some variation of keyword matching in the document itself, which is why you'd see so many pages back in that time that were loaded with superfluous keywords. It was Google's original PageRank incarnation that made all the difference early on.
I don't know how they live like this.
However, I also don't use Google Search. I use (and pay for) Kagi. So I'm not the intended audience for this.
Edit: When Google IPO'd, the offer was for $2,718,281,828 worth of stock. That was a signal about who was in charge and it colored the company's identity.
This is the opposite.
Back in the 90s Google proved you could make "all" available better via search than the Yahoo catalog a d thus became the landing page.
Nowadays the pure search bar is integrated into the browsers addressbar and Google as starting page has been replaced with Twitter/X, Reddit, news sites, .. and Google has to find something to become the start page again.
I use the $5/month tier ($60 per year) of Kagi.
Google doesn't cost you money... but there is a cost associated with using it, and I'm not willing to pay that cost.
Plus, Google Search's quality has dramatically dropped in the last ten years.
And if blind is to be believed, the next round is already being decided on.
Kinda similar to how we had “the next recession is about to happen any second” since at least 2015.
If this is instead used like the typical chumbox content, that would be a real disappointment. Google would also be shooting itself in the foot if it added a bunch of distractions to the page just as they were poised to realize a intelligent assistant capability (which would benefit from having as clean and interface as they had when they launched web search).
Everybody’s monetizing everything they can as the free money faucet gets turned off.