Comment by Ozzie_osman

Just not search. The search product has pretty much become useless over the past 3 years and the AI answers often will get just to the level of 5 years ago. This creates a sense that that things are better - but really it’s just become impossible to get reliable information from an avenue that used to work very well.

I don’t think this is intentional, but I think they stopped fighting SEO entirely to focus on AI. Recipes are the best example - completely gutted and almost all receive sites (therefore the entire search page) run by the same company. I didn’t realize how utterly consolidated huge portions of information on the internet was until every recipe site about 3 months ago simultaneously implemented the same anti-Adblock.

Competition always is. I think there was a real fear that their core product was going to be replaced. They're already cannibalizing it internally so it was THE wake up call.

Next they compete on ads...

I do miss Google+. For my brain / use case, it was by far the best social network out there, and the Circle friends and interest management system is still unparalleled :)

Google+ was fun. Failed in the market though.

Apple made a social network called Ping. Disaster. MobileMe was silly.

Microsoft made Zune and the Kin 1 and Kin 2 devices and Windows phone and all sorts of other disasters.

These things happen.