I love you. I’m a loyal customer. And product. Both.
I have an Android. Half a dozen Chromebooks. I live my life in Google Calendar. Docs. Sheets. Slides.
There are some things about you I hate – your insistence on ads as your primary source of revenue, more than anything. Particularly given that I pay you to host my e-mail. To manage my workspace. To safeguard my Drive. I want, desperately, to be your customer, and not your product.
A few months ago, you declared, “Code Red.” And you were right to. Because you know what? You’re about to lose me from the one part of your services that serves me ads – search. I don’t see ads on Gmail, because it’s a paid account. I don’t see them in Drive, because you don’t serve ads there. Maybe you’re harvesting some of my data – but not much, because it’s all in my workspace. And today, I think I can say, confidently, that your search is no longer the best search.
That’s crazy, right? But it’s true.
Try Perplexity. I think you’ll find it’s better than Google half the time, and no worse, the other half. Now. I’m not saying Perplexity is going to become the new Google. It might. It might not. But what I am saying is, Google used to own search; it’s about to lose it. If a tiny start-up can produce a product that’s better? The days of Google’s monopoly are numbered.
I won’t be switching away from my Android any time soon. (I hate iPhones.) I won’t be switching away from my Chromebooks any time soon. (I hate iOS and Windows pretty much equally.) But. You’re losing me on search. And I know that’s where YOUR money comes from.