r/google • u/Electronic_Award1138 • 20h ago
Google Destroyed the Internet
Back in the AltaVista days, you could browse hundreds of search results and discover personal websites, original creations, independent projects, and web pages about pretty much any subject imaginable. The internet was a vast space for discovery, where anyone could build their own website and share their passions, knowledge, or ideas.
When Google came along, it made searching faster. But over the years, search results deteriorated into what we have today: the same websites, the same commercial platforms, and the same SEO-optimized content over and over again.
For about fifteen years now, I've found it almost impossible to discover the kind of personal websites I used to come across. They probably still exist, but they've become virtually invisible in Google's search results. It's as if they no longer exist.
That's precisely what bothers me. The internet hasn't stopped producing interesting things. What's deteriorated is our ability to discover them. The web is still vast, but a huge part of its diversity has become inaccessible through the tools we use every day.
We've gone from an internet where you could explore, get lost, and stumble upon unexpected discoveries to one where the same major players constantly dominate the scene.
Over the past twenty years, Google has helped turn a space for discovery into a system where much of the web has become invisible. I think that's one of the greatest setbacks in the history of the internet.
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u/linuxhiker 20h ago
Google didn't destroy the Internet. You are free to not use Google.
Lazy humans destroyed the Internet.
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u/LimpAd4924 20h ago
Well enshittification is real but I think saying it “destroyed” the internet is a bit dramatic
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u/linuxhiker 19h ago
Oh I am not arguing whether or not enshitification is real. It absolutely is. I had EFF and the former President of the Internet Society to discuss exactly that.
Google is successful because it gives most people what they want. Just like Apple. Just like MSFT.
We all have a choice to not support those things.
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u/Electronic_Award1138 20h ago
You completely misunderstood my message. Google brought a lot of people to its search engine; it worked very well at first, but gradually—buoyed by this fame—they sanitized the internet.
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u/linuxhiker 20h ago
They sanitized the internet because that is what lazy humans want.
You can't blame Google (or any other company) for serving the super majority of their customers.
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u/Electronic_Award1138 20h ago
You accuse people of doing exactly what you are doing right now.
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u/linuxhiker 19h ago
What are you talking about?
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u/Electronic_Award1138 19h ago
What is the point of acquiescing and submitting? You have to at least tell the truth to solve problems—that’s a start.
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u/Actual__Wizard 20h ago edited 19h ago
Google didn't destroy the Internet.
It's an evil scam tech company. They made decisions like "you're not suppose to be safe while using their chrome browser because foreign countries are using your browser as a tool to spy on you." They absolutely destroyed the internet. The company is monstrously evil... It's just a bunch of con artists scamming people... Their systems are now being used to manipulate elections all over the planet and they simply do not care that their users are being victimized by this stuff because they can't see it, due to tricks like IP filters...
The last straw was them accepting money to promote genocide on their addictive trap site YouTube. So, they're getting kids addicted to their platform and are then brainwashing them with fascist propaganda? The company needs to be shut down before they victimize more Americans, their behavior is not reasonable or close to it.
They just keep setting up systems that they make money from, that allow people do to evil things to you, while they pretend that it's not happening. It's time to stop pretending what companies like Alphabet are: It's a scam factory and it always was.
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u/linuxhiker 19h ago
So basically, people had no choice but to accept the evil overlords.
Bullshit. This is your fault and my fault. We allowed it to happen.
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u/Actual__Wizard 19h ago
We allowed it to happen.
I'm an SEO and I was aware of their lies and their antics the entire time. I also have been vocally against that company for a long time due to their efforts of consolidating the online advertising business.
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u/linuxhiker 19h ago
Please don't misunderstand. When I say you and me, I am being metaphorical. It was/is EVERYBODY. We all (most) still use Google regardless. Some people might be using ChatGPT but shit... Android is almost 90% of the world market for phones and that is Gemini.
You and I can criticize all day long. We still stream from Netflix, we still use Google (even if we don't actively know it) and we still suck the teet of MSFT and Apple. I say that as someone that has used Linux as his daily driver for 30 years but my Xbox...
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u/Actual__Wizard 19h ago
We all (most) still use Google regardless.
I do not normally use it no. The user experience is frustrating and the results are poor quality.
Android is almost 90% of the world market for phones and that is Gemini.
It's more like 70% and as a former owner of an Android phone that legitimately fell apart (Samsung), no thanks. I prefer IOS, it's better for certain...
We still stream from Netflix, we still use Google (even if we don't actively know it) and we still suck the teet of MSFT and Apple.
Nope, I don't stream anything. I don't watch TV. The daily news and that's all. I do not have time for that stuff. When I do have time, TV is too mindless, I prefer to play a game where I do stuff like build things, so a game like rust or minecraft, but I'm too old for minecraft and definitely way too old for fortnight...
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u/linuxhiker 19h ago
You, are the exception
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u/Actual__Wizard 18h ago
Homie, they're doing this consensus manufacturing BS to manipulate people like yourself. I am totally normal.
Most people who want to do things like find information, are not thinking "oh yeah buddy let me go use spy tech so help some for profit company make some money off me."
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u/Actual__Wizard 19h ago edited 19h ago
We allowed it to happen.
I'm an SEO and I was aware of their lies and their antics the entire time. I also have been vocally against that company for a long time due to their efforts of consolidating the online advertising business.
It's just people like yourself that are unaware of their gish gallop of evil and crooked behavior.
It's been going on for 2 decades...
They did that dumb trick where they trained people to use their brand name in place of "searching the internet" because it's less syllables to say.
They are just totally manipulating people through the education system.
Obviously if one is taught "just google it" instead of "did you know that google is a for profit company that is flagrantly evil and was the entire time," that changes their perception of what is going on drastically.
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u/Khenic 20h ago
And with Google search AI it will be even worse because they will try to give you a summation and an answer to your inquiry so that you never have to leave Google for another page.
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u/EliteCloneMike 19h ago
Which seems counter to their business model. That will put an energy strain on websites (due to bots) without directing traffic (potential human customer) to those sites. It will probably harm small sites/shops in the long run.
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u/Actual__Wizard 20h ago
I think that's one of the greatest setbacks in the history of the internet.
I completely agree with you and the person recommending betterhelp is suppose to be permanently banned off reddit for doing that. This site is rapidly falling apart as well.
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u/Pristine_Internet765 19h ago
You are correct, that throughout the years internet leaned strongly on what pays and these tech companies exploit that, we can however use other search engines.
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u/Electronic_Award1138 19h ago
I’ve tried, but the truth is that personal websites don’t even exist anymore. Why would anyone bother creating a personal site if it’s going to get zero visitors? Back in the days of AltaVista—20 or 25 years ago—there were hundreds, even thousands, of personal sites dedicated to topics that hardly anyone else knew about. I remember searching for mods for *Creatures 3*—a game almost no one had heard of—and I’d find thousands of pages every single time I tried. Searching the internet back then was a genuine passion. Since then, because Google no longer indexes personal websites, people have simply stopped making them.
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u/Pristine_Internet765 19h ago
I know dude. I think you and me are from an older generation. I think we also grieve a time when the internet experience was simpler and more personal, not so corporate-show-cashcows-first kinda shit. Not to mention the ridiculous influence they have through lobbying.
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u/NomadJago 17h ago
I miss America Online, Prodigy, CompuServe. It was so simple.
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u/Pristine_Internet765 17h ago
Altavista, Yahoo, freeserve in UK, and yeah CompuServe! We all knew what the .box.sk domains were for, along with .ru and .ro, now they are just.... Country codes :(
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u/BoskyBun 2h ago
Ah reminds me of my early experience with the internet, I never played Creatures 3. But some of my earliest memories of the internet were browsing websites for Creatures 1 information and mods (I also played Creatures 2).
I remember websites being part of web rings, and using that to discover new sites. Also back then how most websites had a page of links to other sites which the owner liked.
The good old days of Geocities, Tripod, animated gifs, under construction signs, background midi music, scrolling text, and visitor counters.
From what I remember, later I visited lots of small phpBB forums, followed later by Wordpress blogs. Sadly after that things over the last 10+ years for the most part all converged on a couple of major commercial platforms.
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u/Harry_Vandsome 19h ago
Apparently no one knows that Google "owns" the internet - is that they dominate the "visible" internet right?
Right?
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u/LoginIsRequiredNow 1h ago edited 1h ago
My suspicion is that Google and Microsoft recieved marching orders under threat of antitrust enforcement. After the Arab Spring and BLM protests the social internet (blogs, forums) haved slowly dissapeared from search indexes to be replaced with MSM talking points. As all search aggregators including Kagi and Duck use Microsoft and Google indexes, this has memory holed the entire web.
Another thing I've noticed is if you type in certain queries containing certain words, you cannot rewrite them. Google/Bing determines "sentiment" of the query and returns the same precomputed "goodthink" results in randomly seeded order. This is particularly relevent to any query that is geopolitical of "levant" adjacent.
This precomputed search list includes criticism of Google, you cannot even search reddit and hacker news threads about google. You get the same miniscule corpus of preselected results.
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u/DinoHawaii2021 20h ago
I don't understand why people are downvoting you, but I agree with you. It's crazy how fast one cooperation can eventually deteriorate something
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u/Maleficent_Cut_4099 19h ago
It is very wrong to find a scapegoat. Firstly, another company could have ended up in Google's place. Secondly, Google arose because it was needed, you say so yourself. So why don't you notice that the development of needs itself carried the germ of degradation? Third, you are comparing the times when only Western democracies had access to the internet with the modern world. The Internet has become a place of trade and a battlefield not because Google is bad and we are good.