I feel like that this has not changed the last 20 years. Yes - google was at some point like a miracle that seemed to solve lots of problems around searching the www for information.
While google "refined" its search and monetarized it the web still evolved and is evolving to something.. different. Many of websites most people already know, competing around google top rankings and ad revenue; there are even people dedicated to "make $website more visible to the web (what they really mean is google)" for lots of money while the real internet goes on in the background.
We need more ways to search the web. We need lots of different search engines that are competing and working together also. The web is still young and no one really knows what it will be in the future. (I fear it has to do with ads. Lots. Of. Ads)
>The web is still young and no one really knows what it will be in the future.
My fear is that walled gardens might win in the future because who guarantees you that websites won't move to Facebook Pages, Facebook Groups, Slack and Discord channels etc. Open web is weaker than ever just look at LinkedIn; walled garden, throws you Register form in the face when you try to access it and won't let anybody crawl or scrape their content except Google who drives more traffic to their walled garden.
I feel like that this has not changed the last 20 years. Yes - google was at some point like a miracle that seemed to solve lots of problems around searching the www for information.
While google "refined" its search and monetarized it the web still evolved and is evolving to something.. different. Many of websites most people already know, competing around google top rankings and ad revenue; there are even people dedicated to "make $website more visible to the web (what they really mean is google)" for lots of money while the real internet goes on in the background.
We need more ways to search the web. We need lots of different search engines that are competing and working together also. The web is still young and no one really knows what it will be in the future. (I fear it has to do with ads. Lots. Of. Ads)