After listening to a podcast episode on enshittification, Google has been on my mind lately, specifically how it survives an ever-enshittifying landscape by being fine for the average user. Not great, not even good, but comparatively, fine.
Let’s break it down with Google’s biggest products!
Google Search
Google Search is the original part of Google, launching in 1998 as a product that is very different today. And yet, it still serves the same core function. In the early 1990s, search engines were really just directories of curated sites that you could then search. The dominant ones in the field were Yahoo, Excite, and AOL. url.town is a fun revival of this concept. Towards the end of the 1990s, these search engines started launching bots (aka spiders) that would crawl and index the web automatically, and they weren’t very good at it. Any site mentioning Microsoft was just as important in the search results for “Microsoft” as Microsoft’s own site.
When Google launched in 1998, it introduced PageRank, an ever-changing algorithm that in short does its best to only return the results you really want. Today, the quality of Google’s results is still what sets it apart, but not by much these days; other providers are catching up. Along with Google’s results come handy highlighted information, especially when searching for actors and films. You may get what you want without ever having to leave Google. Then there’s the Gemini in the room. I’m not a fan of having AI tell me what it thinks I’m looking for. If that gets any better, there will be very little need to leave Google ever again. Sites that would have been visited will lose ad revenue or subscribers and eventually shut down. But, with Google’s search results being more and more polluted by AI-generated sites, maybe an AI summary of them isn’t all that bad, at least until Google adjusts PageRank again.
Verdict: Fine. Google Search works as advertised with a slight edge over competitors. It’s gotten worse over time, bloated with extra features and ads, and we’ll get into the whole privacy nightmare later.
Alternatives: Ecosia is free, provides less bloat and ads, and returns decent results. Their profits also go to reforestation projects. DuckDuckGo is free, returns decent results, and boasts an impressive privacy commitment.
Gmail
The Gmail email service launched in 2004, bringing with it an impressive 1GB storage, 10x the next highest offering. To date, it is up to 15GB. You really only have to delete email if you want to. Speaking of email, it works great! Since launch, it’s been my secondary email address for when I have to sign up for things that could potentially spam me, because its spam filter is also great. Composing an email in it is good, and I don’t think anything is ever really going to be great in that field. It’s a few text boxes and few buttons. The auto-suggestions as you type are a 50/50 mix of helpful and annoying.
Verdict: Fine. Gmail works as advertised, but it’s no better than the competition as it has become bloated with extra features and ads over time.
Alternatives: If you’re on an Apple device, iCloud Mail is the obvious choice. Proton Mail is free, with only 1GB of storage, but boasts an impressive privacy commitment. Thunderbird Pro is a new player on the field, but is not available for free and is currently behind a waitlist.
Google Docs Editors
Providing a word processor, spreadsheets, presentations, and more, Google Docs Editors launched in 2006 to take on Microsoft Office. Google Docs Editors matched it perfectly, and the only thing it added was real-time collaboration (multiple people could edit the same document at the same time), which Microsoft didn’t add until 7 years later.
Verdict: Fine. It started fine, and it continues to hold that title. The only major change since is the addition of Gemini, which desperately tries to help you work, like a more competent and yet also more annoying Clippy.
Alternatives: Microsoft Office, of course. Pages, Numbers, and Keynote if you’re on an Apple device. LibreOffice is free and cross-platform, providing everything you’d expect from an office suite these days.
Google Chrome
The Google Chrome web browser launched in 2008. It does its job well, has everything you’d expect from a browser, including a fast rendering engine. The addition of Gemini is getting a bit annoying, though.
Verdict: Fine. It doesn’t break the mold, but it works.
Alternatives: Safari, if you’re on an Apple device. Vivaldi is an excellent customizable browser that runs on Chromium (think of it as the innards that power Chrome) without any trace of Google. And, of course, Firefox is still hanging in there.
YouTube
Acquired by Google in 2006, YouTube is a video site that needs no introduction, and here’s where I break the format a bit. It’s not fine, it’s great by virtue of having practically no competition. It’s continually bloated with new features and ads, but it has the videos you’re looking for on the channels you want to follow.
Vimeo comes close, but comparatively very few creators are there. PeerTube lets you run your own YouTube-like service and even make it publicly available, but we’re well beyond the average user here.
The Privacy Issue
This is where all of Google falls apart. Despite starting with search, Google is foremost an ad company, the largest in the industry, generating the majority of its revenue. Nothing makes as much money as targeting ads, and that’s Google’s specialty. The more an advertising platform knows about you, the more it can serve you ads that you’ll want to click on, and everything you do on a Google product goes to build that profile about you, and it can be given to third parties.
With that said, Google also acquires information from data brokers, and Google Analytics runs on more sites than any other visitor insight service, so Google will have decent information about you whether you use its products or not.
There’s not much you can do here besides use a good ad/tracker blocker, like Wipr if you use Safari, or AdGuard, and a good data removal service to continually get your data out of the hands of data brokers.
Android
I won’t spend much time on the Android mobile phone operating system, released in 2008. It is indeed just fine, but it’s the most locked-in product of all of Google’s. If you get a device running Android, you can probably run a different operating system, but it’s not an easy process for the average user.
Verdict
Fine. For the average user, Google products are simply there, they work, they aren’t bad, and that’s how Google survives the constant march of enshittification. There will always be those of us who demand a higher standard, and especially more privacy, but for most folks, Google products are just fine.
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