It may seem like a faint memory now, but there was a time in the not-so-distant past when Google wasn’t as synonymous with search as it is today. Even after its launch in 1998, kids of the dial-up generation fired up Ask.com – not Google – posing queries to Jeeves, a digital butler named after PG Wodehouse’s fictional character.
But soon enough, the newer, cooler search engine, which now comes under the umbrella company Alphabet, began to dominate the market – the word “google” even became a verb, demonstrating its popularity. And not without good reason.
Beyond serving users the most accurate results of any of its counterparts, it also had a user-friendly interface and crushed its rivals by being the best product available. Sure, habit and marketing spoke for a big portion of its user base, but people weren’t forced to use it – even if they were using Google-driven kit, such as the Android operating system or a Chrome browser.
Fast-forward to 2025, though, and Google not only makes up around 90 per cent of searches in the UK, the landscape is more than a little different to what it was – so much so that watchdogs around the world are questioning how the American firm has managed to monopolise the market, and whether it is right for one company to wield such power.
The UK’s Competition & Markets Authority (CMA) is not only proposing that more be done when it comes to diversifying search results and surfacing businesses and publishers more (over the years Google has implemented various search engine results page (SERP) features which deincentivise click-through and encourage more time spent on, well, Google – it’s latest being AI-generated content), they are also suggesting the tech giant gives users a “choice screen”.
What does that mean, exactly? And will it be as irritating as that cookies notice that crops up every damn time you go online? Perhaps.
When I probed the CMA, I was pointed to yet more dense regulator-speak in its documents. But essentially, it could mean a pop-up at the point of access, asking whether you actually want to use Google or an alternative, such as Bing or DuckDuckGo.
It’s been years since I’ve used anything other than Google, but for the purpose of this piece, I road-tested some of those alternatives, typing in: “Personal Independence Payment”.
Although all three platforms served the gov.uk website first, interestingly, Google’s competitors also placed Citizens Advice much higher and de-prioritised news stories about coming changes to PIP. And as someone who is disabled and highly invested in this topic, I found the latter to be more relevant to my search intentions.
The results screens on these alternatives were also a good deal cleaner, and DuckDuckGo, in particular, highlights its promise to protect users’ privacy and not track them across the web. If data protection is your thing (I know I’m keen on it), it is a product worth trying.
True, Google is still the kingpin and can pose real problems for businesses that are heavily reliant on it – a tweak of the algorithm can wreck a business’s revenues. The CMA might also be right to worry about Google’s ad revenue and how this, too, creates less room for healthy competition.
Looking at ways to give firms more power and reducing bias in search results are admirable goals that most people can get behind. But does that mean people will make the switch to other platforms?
As Google’s global search market share dipped below 90 per cent in the final three months of 2024, there is already some promise that its reign of supremacy is diminishing – arguably users are getting fed up of ads, often incorrect AI results, and the website they’re actually looking for being buried on the page. It, therefore, could be possible that this problem ultimately fixes itself.
I’m not sure… but I know I for one will start diversifying which search engines I use – and how I use them.
