Over the last week, I’ve been thinking about how Google has changed fundamentally.

If you go back a few years, the focus seemed to be to create great products with little downside for the user. Famously, they had “20% time” – where developers could spend one day a week on any side project or idea they wanted.

Now product innovation has been de-funded (and 20% time is no longer “no questions asked”) and the focus now appears to be on how Google can collect and monetise user information.

I turns out, I’m not alone in thinking this way. In an excellent blog post yesterday, Seth Godin asks, “Is Google Jumping The Shark”:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2013/10/is-google-jumping-the-shark.html

The question is, as the Google user experience inevitably continues to decline, what will happen to their market share? Are searchers so habituated to using Google that they won’t consider another search engine? Or will they, like me, change to Bing?

Steve

Categories: google