They have completely monopolized access. I was thinking am a weird exception for not ranking for the exact name/domain of my product until I have met a couple other entrepreneurs who have names/domains and still don't rank first but instead some other random website will show up.
So just the simple fact of "existing" on the Internet now costs money. Not only that, with their ads, you can target competitors search names. So you need to outbid your competitors so that your users don't get directed to your competitors by "accident". When I lost uBlock last month, I was surprised how many sites buy ads for their own names.
> So just the simple fact of "existing" on the Internet now costs money. Not only that, with their ads, you can target competitors search names. So you need to outbid your competitors so that your users don't get directed to your competitors by "accident".
To be clear, they have been doing this for so long I was first told it by a friend in the travel sector almost 20 years ago, along with the explanation of why this ends up absorbing a frightening proportion of the spare money in the economy.
The whole reason Google had such a nightmare over Facebook was FB is the only thing that broke their monopoly on this, which is why FB also prints money.
Makes sense they are concerned about losing the "browser" because it's no longer about the search/service quality and more about holding the platform that most people use for access.
It's interesting that not many investors sees this and there is little investment in an alternative browser. It is literally a software worth hundreds of billions of $$$. I hate Sam Altman as an individual but I have to admit that he could see it which is probably why he tried to grab "chrome" when an opportunity presented itself.