Why we will always Google

It seems like every week a new search engine launches and another one dies. Some go quietly – remember Cuil, anyone? There was a huge buzz around the time of launch, but that soon dropped off, as the traffic figures for the past 12 months show, below.

Bing made headlines last month when it overtook Yahoo as the number 2 search engine in the U.S. Wolfram Alpha also made a big splash recently similar headlines, but again the traffic has died down from the original buzz at the time of launch.

While Bing’s growth is impressive, the traffic is still a drop in the ocean when compared to Google’s stranglehold in the search market, at over 70%

Each one is billed to be the next Google. I was looking to Bing to be the next big thing. I used it as my default browser search for a week and I don’t think there was one time when I didn’t then go to Google to perform the same search. I’m sure Bing’s results were adequate, but I knew they weren’t quite what I was looking for. I know this because I search all day every day and I’m used to the results I get. I want what Google gives me.

The reason we (I) will always Google, is because it is the one site I can trust to make sense of the ever-sprawling mess that is the internet. You can be pretty sure when something has passed over into a verb, it’s there to stay. ‘To search’ is really ‘to Google’. Whether we like it or not, we trust Google. The internet is constantly changing – every day a new site launches that we might check out, bookmark, dismiss, add to our feeds. But it’s Google I come back to again and again. I can’t shift my reliance on it now.

The beauty is clearly in the simplicity of the interface. Very little has changed over the years – we are still faced with one simple search box. While Google have clearly branched out in the products that they offer – this holy grail of the internet has remained a constant. Uncluttered and simple. I can say without a shred of doubt that I trust Google. I might not like what it does with the information it has on me, but I trust it to follow my command, scour the big wide web for me, and give me what I’m looking for. It’s too late for this to change now. Google has earned our trust – this is no small thing, and I for one am pretty happy to keep it.