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by chc 4978 days ago
"People" as in "some number of people somewhere"? Sure.

But people in general? I strongly doubt it. Hang out with some "non-technical people" (they will often helpfully describe themselves this way for you) while they use the computer sometime. If they didn't have Google, they might be able to get to Facebook, but that would be pretty much the boundary of the Internet for them.
2 comments
Dylan16807 4978 days ago
You don't think one of the top news stories is going to be 'omigod google is down, type yahoo.com at the top'?
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chc 4977 days ago
I don't think most people read newspapers on a daily (or even monthly) basis, and they're not going to be able to get their news online that day.
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Dylan16807 4976 days ago
I was thinking TV news, personally.
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code_duck 4976 days ago
Every browser has a built in search feature, which offers a variety of providers. IE doesn't default to Google.

I'm not sure why people here are acting as if Bing, Yahoo etc. don't exist and don't offer a decent service that would be adequate for the internet to continue functioning without Google.

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chc 4976 days ago
We're not acting like that. We're saying it may as well be that way for most people. You and I would be fine if Google disappeared. We'd just switch our auto search to Bing/Duck Duck Go/Blekko and never look back. But most "non-technical" people are dependent on Google, and if they wanted to use Bing, they would have to either search "Bing" on Google and click the link in the results or find a nerd to set it up for them.

Real World Example: Some relative of my girlfriend set up her mom's computer to use Yahoo. But she has since been convinced that Google is better and she should use that. So what does she do? Every time she starts up her web browser, she types "google" into the Yahoo search box, clicks the link to go to the Google homepage, then does her search there.

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code_duck 4974 days ago
People can learn. It's not like they would never be able to use their computers again. They'd call their daughter and she'd be like "oh, click on that little arrow and click on 'yahoo'".

Yeah, if any major service that millions of people used every day disappeared, there would be a period of adjustment. But that's all... a period of adjustment.

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