Back then Sergey could say “when users come to Google.com all they want to do is search. And that’s our product” and mean it.
Now his search engine is the equivalent of programmes on ITV, there solely to attract eyeballs for advertisers. They may not do banner ads, popups, interstitials or flashing multimedia monstrosities, but more and more of the page’s real estate is taken up with paid-for content, and the ads are getting more and more intrusive.
They have even extended their reach far from simple web search, with the Froogle shopping service and the recently announced book site. Both of these are commercial ventures that trade on the Google brand.
Golden days
In my opinion, Google today is far from the great search engine it was in those far-off days, yet I still use it.
Even knowing that it indexes only a small proportion of the web using a technique that too often gives precedence to pages that lack authority or coherence, that it is skewed by multiple blog links and can be manipulated by unscrupulous advertisers, doesn’t stop me typing search terms into my toolbar and feasting on the results.
Perhaps it is simply that Google has become the Coke of the web. Sweet, available everywhere, and the first choice of the consumer.
The fine wines and elegant cordials are still available, of course, but Coke outsells them all, just as Google outranks other, more refined, search tools.
Like that other dominant American brand, McDonald’s, you seem to know where you are with a Google, and for some people familiarity will always be important.
Google parece estar perdiendo el aura que tuvo un d