[pachydermic]

I think apps have just done a good job keeping you in their little walled garden - they don't want you browsing the web, checking other pages, etc. They want your eyeballs on their screen so they can sell ads.

I think it's easy in theory (and probably hard in practice) to solve this problem. Google just needs to reduce the friction of web searches. I think they've gone a long way to achieving this goal on Android 6.0. For the uninitiated, they added that weird hold to search which automatically picks stuff out from the screen to search and often presents results in a way where it's really easy to switch back to what you were originally looking at.

Imagine if all you had to do was think about something to initiate a google search. Okay, that would probably get pretty dystopian but it would let you do many more searches even while your screen has been abducted by an app.

I think all google needs to do is reduce the frictions to search.

[totalrobe]

On my phone, the google search is top and center on my home screen.

Literally all it takes to search is one click and you can start typing or talking.

I've got a motorola so I can also just start talking with my keyphrase and it will search...can't really get any easier.