I would argue that Google has had declining quality in search results, bordering on completely unusable in the past few years, and that has resulted in people using LLMs for things that they would have searched for years ago. Although they are competitive in AI, I think it is surprising that their product continues to frustrate people and that they are a distant second place.
Without taking a stance on whether their search has improved or degraded, we can observe that the same claim (“search is so degraded it’s unusable”) has been common for like 5 years at this point. If it’s really such a problem, why haven’t people already switched? Google’s search is at 90% market share [1]. Surely if it was perceived as a problem to customers there should be some measurable effect?
No offense to Kagi, but they don’t rank in the top 6. They are behind even Baidu, which I had forgotten exists. I think they have good mind-share among power users, but probably not in the general population.
But the question is whether or not Kagi is a competitor — not just in regards to the market share it currently holds, but what it could come to hold. Let's see where it is next year.
Google has succeeded in enshittifying their search in a way that the vast majority of users (not customers -- those are the advertisers) have not noticed.
If the users aren’t bothered by the “enshittification”, does that reflect poorly on the CEO? The CEO is supposed to make money, and maybe has personal aspirations to improve the world. They’re not making art.
Like I said originally, I think the rise of ChatGPT is a partly a consequence of this. It’s not that people are choosing a different search engine, they’re not searching at all because LLMs will give a better answer faster.
Also, whether it’s ChatGPT or something else, five years is really not that long. Time will tell, but does it really seem like decreasing quality in the name of profits is such a good long-term strategy?
