Fair enough, but Google has made their mission about making the world's information accessible, moreso than being the best search engine; I assume you still use YouTube, perhaps you use Google Maps (although there are plenty of good navigation alternatives), perhaps you use Google Translate, etc.
An aside, but funny enough, one thing I like about DDG is how much better it is at finding YouTube videos. I assume Google is encumbered by antitrust fears or something when it comes to video search.
I’m not sure it’s a complete aside. What you’re describing is the general recipe that business school warns against for entrenched industries. That is to say, if you give up low margin products, you give an inroad for competitors to gain competancy and scale. Rebar in the steel industry is sort of the hallmark example. Even though search is still an important part of their ad income, I don’t see google’s dominance in search lasting another 100 years, since there will continue to be smaller competitors who excell in some small low margin area and it will slowly chip away at their brand.
When you put it like that, suddenly it starts to make a lot more sense to me why Google seemingly relinquishes projects to their graveyard; they probably have a lot of competitors for each abandoned project that do the same thing as well, or better. It would be nice if Google had a default policy of allowing exports of stored data to said competitors, though..
