- cross-posted to:
- internetfuneral@lemmy.world
Back when the internet wasn’t trash, before the corporate world ruined it.
Ah the ol’ IPO switcheroo
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.
“don’t be evil”, nah fuck that shit, google
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/
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
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Does firefox do this automatically? Because I’ve never seen this junk everyone is talking about, and was wondering why. This might explain it.
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