Internet lump of google
Never forget that Facebook is not the ONLY evil guy out there…
Seriously. There is so much talking of the huge problems caused by Facebook, that it is too easy to forget that Google is not exactly the nice guy on the block. Ten (TEN) years ago there we got warnings that Internet was coalescing into lump of Google. More in detail, in 2007:
- the majority of internet traffic was more evenly distributed across tens of thousands of networks
- P2P traffic peaked at 40% of all worldwide traffic
That, in 2007. In 2009, just two years later,
- Just 300 networks contributed to 60% of all traffic online
- P2P traffic only accounted for 18% of traffic
- Google was “clearly the largest digester of the internet, accounting for 6% of all web traffic globally”
That, in 2009. What about 2019?
In June 2019, for the first time, Less than Half of Google Searches Resulted in a Click, that is in actual visits, visibility, interaction and revenues to the independent websites that Google indexes. Including those websites that succumbed to Google AMP. That is BAD for all those websites, that is for you too, eventually. You do not want an internet that is just “a lump” of any single company, whoever that company is.
Add to that the fact that Google forgets the old Web and… it’s really time to switch to DuckDuckGo. OR at least, if for whatever reason you cannot ditch Google searches yet, to actually visit the websites it lists. Possibly NOT the paying ones, when appropriate. Please do it. Now.
Who writes this, why, and how to help
I am Marco Fioretti, tech writer and aspiring polymath doing human-digital research and popularization.
I do it because YOUR civil rights and the quality of YOUR life depend every year more on how software is used AROUND you.
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