Is Google still 'good'?

It was back in 1998 or 1999 that I began using Google search. I loved the pared back look of the Google search page (if you were around then you will remember how CLUTTERED most pages were), and loved the ethos of the organisation ("Don't be Evil"; Vise, 2005, p. 4). It was a good story, and I bought in. At the time I was a Netscape Navigator browser user, as it seemed less bandwidth hungry than Microsoft's Internet Idiot (as I called it), and - as we were on poor-man internet in the provinces of New Zealand - anything that reduced load was to be embraced.

As time went on, Google continued to seem a great company, with 20% of engineering time gifted to intrapreneurship thus creating so many fab tools. I became a Google Chrome user. I used Google Calendar, gmail, contacts, Blogger, Google Photos and GDrive. While I explored the idea of Google AdWords for my business, I decided that that was a step too far... but all seemed ticketty boo. Until around 2017, when I began to realise that my Google search results appeared increasingly skewed; started to appreciate the true extent of Google data monetisation; and felt that the volume of targeted advertising, direct selling and profiling occurring was outweighing the value of my search returns. 

But it was the YouTube pre-, mid- and post-roll ads that became a tipping point for me. In general, uploaded video is created by vloggers, edited by vloggers, uploaded and managed by vloggers. While vloggers might tout sponsor product within their content, Google - as YouTube's owner - placed additional ads, but only if you were a non-premium user. Advertisers pay Google for ad placement, theoretically selling to the watchers. This is a similar model to the academic journal model - where academics research the content, write up the content, edit the content, upload the content, yet the big publishing houses make all the profits ON the content - oh: and taxpayers have paid for the content. Twice (read more here). Also read 'enshittification' (Doctorow, 2025) for more information about this type of rape and pillage model of oligarchic capitalism.

And, yes, I know that if we are not paying, then we are the product (Johnson, 2001). But I AM paying for some of these services, and yet - somehow - I am still the product. I have pulled back on my use because, like the rort that is academic publishing, Google is effectively being paid from both ends. We users largely make content and put it online without charge. Then Google charges us for sharing that content - either by us paying for premium access, or by forcing us to watch ads. Which advertisers have already paid Google (Alphabet) for. 

Instead I actively seek alternatives. I went back to Firefox, despite finding it clunkier. I stuck with Firefox until Brave came along. I moved to DuckDuckGo on PC, phone and laptop for search, experiencing more targeted and fewer - in my view - advertising-oriented results. While I don't think Google/Alphabet are actively 'evil' I grow less convinced that they are 'good' either. I suspect they have little regard for me as a minor, paying customer.

I am not being absolutist about this: and I have not 'divorced' Google. I still use Google Calendar to co-ordinate my two separate Microsoft work calendars and my private Google one. I still use Blogger and Google Photos. But I use my G:Drive only for items I want to share, keeping my main storage offline. My Gmail is mostly used for subscriptions. While I still use Google search from time to time, it is now perhaps only 1 or 2% of my total search. I rarely use Google Maps.

Google is still trading off those fantastic ideas created by its intrapreneurial engineers. While their tools still have utility, I will keep using them. 

But I seek non-Google solutions, to be able to direct my small payments to smaller businesses and start-ups which help to provide more consumer choice, and therefore a bit of competition to keep the behemoths more customer-focused. 

And perhaps more honest.

Sam

References:

Doctorow, C. (2025). Enshittification: Why everything suddenly got worse and what to do about it. Verso.

Gleason, J., Hu, D., Robertson, R. E., & Wilson, C. (2023, June). Google the gatekeeper: How search components affect clicks and attention. In Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (Vol. 17, pp. 245-256). https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/ICWSM/article/download/22142/21921

Johnson, T. (2001, June 23). You're not the customer, you're the product. Google Groups. https://groups.google.com/g/rec.arts.tv.interactive/c/EY-nOSMlAPE/m/GtKHp6qQBiUJ?pli=1

Vise, D. A. (2005). The Google Story. Bantam Dell.