[y42]

Yeah well, that's what you want, and probably a decent couple of power users. And I totally agree.

But here is the thing:

My mom, dad and even my brother, they don't need that. They need the limitations aka borders, the "simplicity", the synchronisation and the search results. They still stick with Facebook, Google and Amazon because it's easy to use and their gate to the Internet, where all the smart people are living and the "future is real". They do not understand the drawbacks or they just don't care.

And I dare to assume that this pictures the vast majority of Internet users.

[jackblemming]

Good thing there's more of a market than your mom, dad, and even your brother, or alternative search competitors like duckduckgo and others would be completely screwed.

[fxtentacle]

Maybe the market of people that are significantly different from his/her mom is just too small to justify the significant investments needed to build a search engine.

Or said another way: If 99% are happy with Google, can the remaining 1% pay enough to finance "Google pro" ?

[marcinzm]

Is there an alternative search engine right now that is both good and not based heavily on an incumbent by a large tech company (ie: bing)? If not then the argument isn't disproved.

[ZeroGravitas]

This is actually what I worry about more.

I'm browsing with Firefox on Mac with adblockers, and have some knowledge of what the potential scams are.

Is Google actually helping the average user more than a hypothetical alternative?

Don't know, tricky question to answer, but whatever the answer is it's likely a society wide change, involving regulation and new business models and ethical consumer choices, not just a new search engine.