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Comment by mythz | Hacker News Reader

Google, more than any other company, has made the web a better place. The web was horrible dumping ground before Google - laced with Portals and flashing display ads, pathetic Search, fragmented content.

Chrome's the best browser, Gmail the best Email client, Google Maps / Earth the best mapping client, there's only 1 YouTube, the Mobile landscape would be a walled garden with every user a hostage if it wasn't for Android, then there's a zillion other apps I use on a daily basis that is best-in-class like Hangouts, Analytics, Google G+ Communities, Groups, etc - and I use them all for free.

The world needs more Google's not less, the web is a much better place for having them.

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I disagree, the web of the 90s was really awesome. I remember one of the first things I did when I got online was look up Star Wars websites (using Webcrawler). There were dozens of sites, all made by fans, all amateur, all full of cheesy graphics, .wav sounds, but all unique. Here's the Google results for "Star wars". Tell me when you get to a result that wasn't created by a corporation: https://www.google.com/q=star+wars

The web of the 90s was an awesome exclusive subculture. The web google has been promoting is inclusive and egalitarian. It isn't just for nerds, and cares about things other than Star Wars.

I think the word you're looking for is "corporate". It's not google's fault, of course. It's just the way the world works when money is involved. Large organizations that stood to make a profit were going to change it significantly to raise their margins, no matter what.

The web of the 1990s was far more open to participation outside of the walled gardens. It may have been more difficult to get started with, but it was definitely more inclusive.

"The web google has been promoting is inclusive and egalitarian."

Egalitarian, for as long as you can fund, and outbid others in, Adwords. Google has switched to what amounts to a pay-per-play model in searches they have ads for, and on the rest they favor huge established brand$. Hardly egalitarian

I never thought I'd ever say this; but I miss Geocities. And i miss WebRings. There were so many unusual sites out there. In the 90's the web was fun, artsy and mysterious. Now it's all MTV.

Maybe there's a startup opportunity in creating a successor to webrings that isn't Facebook.

>Google, more than any other company, has made the web a better place. The web was horrible dumping ground before Google - laced with Portals and flashing display ads, pathetic Search, fragmented content.

Perhaps you have not been around in the nineties / early 00, but the web was far more exciting and cool that the corporate BS that it is today.

And YouTube was acquired, it wasn't Google's. Same with Google Earth / Maps. And Chrome started as Webkit by Apple (based on KHTML). Google just bought all these things or threw money at forking them (Webkit), and made the web it's own monopoly.

I agree. I miss the web of the nineties. Fan pages made by amateurs, crazy color combinations, under construction gifs, minimal ads (just a simple banner), no tracking into oblivion. But most of all the vibrant feel, the helpfullness and the innocence. It was a cozy place.

...and when you searched for "widgets" you'd find a person a thousand miles away who knew about as much as there possibly is to know about widgets, and they had a little website with all the information. Maybe they were a bus driver, or maybe a professor, but they loved widgets and shared that with you.

Now? "Buy WIDGETS with Amazon".

More than any other here, your post makes me nostalgic about the old days. Kudos.

It's an odd argument to make - that is, yes, of course the web is now better in many aspects than what it was 10 years ago -- but what makes you think that without Google the progress would stop, or even stall? If you think about it, anything that a lot of people care about and work on will get better after 10 years of work. You don't need a dictator, even a supposedly benevolent one, to have progress.

>The world needs more Google's not less, the web is a much better place for having them.

You mean it needs more companies who buy awesome technologies that other companies created (e.g. ... well, nearly everything on your list of "best in class")? Don't we have enough of those already?

In your opinion. In my opinon the Gmail web client is a disgusting mess of anti-usability and Chrome is arguably not "the best". Webkit is the best - Chrome is a good browser, but empirically - not - the best for ever type of user. Google Maps / Earth may be the best overall free mapping solution for consumers, but it's certainly not the best for all mapping needs. The client applications are somewhat anaemic.

Youtube - Other than the fact that Youtube hosts all the videos - the overall user experience really, really sucks in my opinion. It never remembers settings, you can't disable autoplay and now they're trying to force everybody to use a real-name Google account to view mature content. Totally lame. I truly hope something better comes along.

I agree with the general sentiment of this article though - that Google was awesome because they were so simple and useful and now they're less awesome because they're pushing this agenda of Google Everything and Everything Online which is annoying to many of us.

I've found the web becomes much better when you make Flash click-to-play. YouTube especially, since the videos don't start until you ask.

That, unfortunately, only works for Flash and not HTML5. But maybe I should just use a better browser and then magically this wouldn’t be an issue or something.

Click-to-play doesn't work along with 1px players. For video it's okay, but come to some music streaming service and be confused how to turn music on.

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