Google ad on a magazine from 1999
Google ad on a magazine from 1999
Back when the internet wasn't trash, before the corporate world ruined it.
Pre-enshittification.
Yes, it really did used to be like that.
A very long time ago.
A lot of e-companies, particularly the search engines, around the turn of the millennium, went completely crazy over the "portal" business. Everyone wanted you to make them your home page. News feeds, generous 15 megabytes of email space, web search index last updated 1.5 geological megacycles ago - "well, you see, the web sure is growing rapidly, dunno if anyone can do anything about that in the future, we sure can't". Oh and ads. Lots of ads.
So in that light, Google kind of stood out. Actually updated search index, relevant results, no-nonsense user interface.
Google was both the best tool to use the Internet and the killer app that anyone could use for the new market. It's instant gigantic growth was because it was good at what it did. Then it forgot what it did and started doing everything another big tech company did, like phones or social media or streaming services. Now it does everything and none of it particularly well. Shame.
They placed quarterly profits over true innovation, then began the slide into irrelevancy
Yeah, this is the context here. The trend was to have these super dense home pages with all sorts of overwhelming noise, like the Yahoo home page:
Google was remarkable for bucking that trend, and basically still does have that ultra focused home page. It's not that now Google shows you ads and a weather widget in the search results-- it's that it's got the good sense to at least wait until you search for something.
Not to detract from the enshittification-themed comments or anything. Please do carry on, fellows.
People have latched onto "enshittification" to mean "things got worse," but this is exactly the phase 1 example of the was Doctorow defined it. Google started out being something optimized for the benefit of the user.
Aged like milk, you say?
Meanwhile I open Edge at work and there’s highly sexual advertising on the screen with the default home page settings.
Well it’s Edge I guess that’s true.
They are talking about Yahoo, which was awesome in the mid 90's, until they decided to try to do everything, shittily. But nobody at Google remembers their roots. They reinvented Yahoo. And now, we're primed for the next Google.
Literally hired the guy from Yahoo to run ads then let him take over search. https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/
Good read. Thanks for sharing
"don't be evil", nah fuck that shit, google
You could've shown us the logo. This was the year when it got rid of the exclamation point and got rewritten in a different font. I'm not sure which logo I prefer.
But yeah, Google in 1999 was pretty damn cool. I wish it still was because my God they stooped way too low lately.
I don't know what they mean by 'portal litter', but lol. They do every other thing they listed now.
Agedlikemilk
