Comment by Retric
12 hours ago
Google beat out the competition by being better in a market with near zero switching costs. It can coast a long time without being the best option, but once the fall starts it’s always harder to gain back reputation.
Today I told someone to google “school name student handbook 2026.” Only to realize I wasn’t using Google so my #1 wouldn’t be in the same place, doubled checked it showed up on Google and eventually found their link to the handbook way down the page.
“Ops, sorry Google sucks now” isn’t going to kill a company quickly but market share is a lagging indicator. Of course some enshitificstion is simply companies responding to what the largest market segment wants so they may actually be doing the correct thing even if it doesn’t seem like it to me.
> Of course some enshitificstion is simply companies responding to what the largest market segment wants
Not the largest market segment, just the segment with the most control/cash to throw around. That segment will only grow smaller and smaller as they gain more power and money. That's the whole plan. The vast majority gets screwed while a shrinking minority gets whatever they want. Making everything worse for everyone who isn't you is probably not doing the correct thing, but it can be the most profitable one. At least for a while anyway.
Many products get worse so they are cheaper to manufacture, more shelf stable, etc and can therefore be profitably sold to more people. Sometimes the opposite happens, but in general when a company optimizes for people with less disposable income than you the product gets worse from your perspective.