The first time anyone used “google” as a verb on TV was in the 2002 ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ episode Help. Watching it in 2024, when Willow - the computer geek witch - suggests googling someone, I barely notice it, so it surprised me when all the other characters seem confused.
Google has become synonymous with the search engine, with finding information. This is a symptom of the monopoly the company has created over searching the Internet. This is bad for a couple of reasons.
Firstly Google’s monopoly allows it to make the product worse to extract more money from you via what Cory Doctorow calls enshittification. Google doesn’t care about you, only money. They know that you will never leave so they can make it worse. Now you have to search for longer to find what you are looking for - and consequently see more adverts. Google rakes in the money that advertisers pay them to get to your eyeballs. Google gets richer and the product gets worse.
Secondly it means that Google is insulated from any bad decisions it might take like - for example - adding misleading AI summaries above the websites you actually want to see in an attempt to ride the AI wave and raise share prices.
This isn’t to say that you are bad if you use Google. And statistically you do - over 90% searches go through Google as of 2024. However Google search is steadily becoming worse and if you want to have a better experience navigating the internet there are alternatives.
I personally recommend using the search engine duckduckgo with the browser Firefox. I find it to be a much better experience than Google search and browser. That said, the most important thing that letting go of Google gives you is choice.