Can we still trust Google?
From data harvesting to monopoly concerns, the world’s leading search engine has never been so divisive – so can we still trust Google as a brand?
It’s hard to imagine, but twenty years ago, search engines were something of a rarity.
Yahoo had only recently moved away from being a paid-for listings directory, and Google – founded in 1998 – was just beginning to assert what would become near-total market dominance.
However, nothing stands still.
Today, the company with the former motto “don’t be evil” has seen its reputation tarnished by a combination of questionable decision-making, failed launches and sheer ubiquity.
It remains the default internet search engine, but can we still trust Google to tell us what we want to know, impartially and – most importantly of all – accurately?
The positives
As a search engine – its primary role in many people’s lives – Google remains peerless as a source of instant information.
Search for a make and model of car, and it will display a detailed sidebar of information about the car’s dimensions, specifications and prices, tailored to your home nation.
It typically lists the manufacturer website as the first result, followed by a mixture of information sources (e.g. Wikipedia), offers (e.g. dealerships) and reviews (e.g. car magazines).
All this happens within a fraction of a second of pressing the magnifying-glass Search button (or Enter on your keyboard).
Rivals like Bing are less consistent in terms of both the results they display and their order of presentation.
Without Google, there’d be no Android handsets or Chromebooks, no Maps or Street View functionality, Google Drive cloud storage or other services many of use rely on heavily.
Foremost among the latter are Gmail and the G Suite productivity tools – the former an expertly curated email service and the latter an affordable alternative to Microsoft 365.
It’s also worth praising Google’s clear Privacy Policy and Terms of Service documents, which compare favourably to far longer and more obtuse documentation from other tech companies.
The negatives
While the platforms above are undeniably excellent, Google has previously tried and failed to offer everything from social media platforms to video calling tools.
The Killed By Google website lists almost 300 products and utilities which were launched amid much fanfare before being dropped – often causing considerable consumer inconvenience.
Like other tech firms, Google has recently fallen down the AI rabbit hole, but some of the AI Overview summaries it publishes before web search results are factually incorrect.
AI overviews are compiled from scraping existing web content without attribution (or payment), often republishing errors or outdated content from the source material.
Notwithstanding generative AI controversies, Google’s search interface has become bloated with adverts, sponsored links and the insertion of other search results like images.
Google sometimes downranks websites almost overnight; two major algorithm changes last year did huge damage to the visibility and economic viability of many legitimate businesses.
Its algorithm composition is cloaked in mystery, so when Google makes mistakes with ranking updates – and it does – you have to simply hope it reverses course quickly.
We could also mention other controversies – antitrust lawsuits, the iniquities of advertising auctions and pay-per-click advertising, automatic image compression in the cloud…
The alternatives
Google dominates the search market in western countries – across the surface web, at least.
Venture onto the Dark Web, and you’ll find numerous engines competing without any one platform enjoying dominance – Ahmia, Torch, DuckDuckGo, etc.
While they vary in presentation and performance, they all share a commitment not to aggressively scrape user data, which Google has become synonymous with.
Many features consumers associate with Google – safe searches, location changes, recently updated pages – can also be found through rival search engines.
At a glance, DuckDuckGo’s interface is similar to Google’s, right down to the search tabs for Images, Video, News and even Shopping alongside the default All results tab.
If you’re concerned about personal data being endlessly resold, switching to a more privacy-focused search engine (or using a second web browser periodically) may be a useful step.
As for our initial question – can we still trust Google – the answer is now a qualified yes, where it would once have been wholehearted.
It still leads the world in some respects, but we’d urge caution about relying too heavily on Google’s infrastructure.
