He claims Google, Facebook, Amazon used to be great but are now shit. What's stopping anyone from recreating what Google, Facebook, and Amazon used to be? If the 2010 equivalent versions of those companies were online, wouldn't you switch to them?
First, network effects. Amazon was able to grow because there wasn't already an Amazon that they'd have to pry users (and sellers) away from. No replacement will have that luxury. Even harder to wean people off Google search, let alone Chrome, let alone Android. In social media, many people are unwilling to leave all their friends (and family) behind to go somewhere and be a stranger again.
Second, funding models. Because of that network effect, nobody will dump the ungodly amounts of cash on an Amazon or Google or Facebook replacement that they dumped on the originals. They can't grow, so they can't compete, so they can't grow, etc.
Third: regulatory capture. Meta is the clearest example of this, secretly funding PACs and lobbyists to get regulation that they are well able to comply with but no smaller competitor possibly could. It's an effective moat.
"If it was done once it can be done again" is just wishful thinking. It's not generally true, and especially not in internet-facing tech. The soil is already depleted, or even poisoned. Reining in the incumbents is a prerequisite to any alternatives getting on their feet.
Half of the time it’s because the companies “good” era was when it was running at a massive loss. And the other half of the time it’s because the whole online environment changed.
Google didn’t deliberately sabotage search results. The internet just became full of more slop than valuable content.
Facebook might have ruined their product, but people wouldn’t want to use the original site anymore either.
1. They heavily prioritized commercial sites, especially e-commerce sites, for monetary reasons.
2. They deprioritized everything but yhr first page of results. Clicking the “next page” buttons on Google is almost completely irrelevant. This further stymied the growth of the non commercial internet.
3. They let blogger go stale after purchasing it. Again, this damaged the growth of the independent Internet which hurt search, since information was now siloed in non open private platforms
4. They killed Google Reader which was the final nail in the blogging coffin.
5. They spent vast amounts of energy pushing AMP which meant Google was now prioritizing a standardized version of news sites, essentially, instead of encouraging freedom to experiment and express. This further stymied the open internet.
IOW, Google, after establishing itself as the gateway to the open, independent internet, through its excellent search, took many steps that destroyed the open and independent internet, which in turn made its search worthless
Google didn't have to "deliberately sabotage search results" for them to be meaningfully culpable in that happening.
They are unquestionably the dominant player in the search market. They are the ones that all the SEO is aimed at gaming. They could have made it a top priority to ensure that search results were useful to the average person. Instead, they made it a top priority to ensure that search results were maximally profitable for them. This is what enabled the rise of SEO slop polluting search results.
And yes, I can absolutely blame them for that: the idea of "maximizing shareholder profit" as a primary goal of companies is a cancer on our society and needs to be destroyed utterly.
