Just not search. The search product has pretty much become useless over the past 3 years and the AI answers often will get just to the level of 5 years ago. This creates a sense that that things are better - but really it’s just become impossible to get reliable information from an avenue that used to work very well.
I don’t think this is intentional, but I think they stopped fighting SEO entirely to focus on AI. Recipes are the best example - completely gutted and almost all receive sites (therefore the entire search page) run by the same company. I didn’t realize how utterly consolidated huge portions of information on the internet was until every recipe site about 3 months ago simultaneously implemented the same anti-Adblock.
Competition always is. I think there was a real fear that their core product was going to be replaced. They're already cannibalizing it internally so it was THE wake up call.
Wartime Google gave us Google+. Wartime Google is still bumbling, and despite OpenAI's numerous missteps, I don't think it has to worry about Google hurting its business yet.
I do miss Google+. For my brain / use case, it was by far the best social network out there, and the Circle friends and interest management system is still unparalleled :)
Windows Phone was actually good. I would even say that my Lumia something was one of best experiences ever on mobile. G+ was also good. Efficient markets mean that you can "extract" rent, via selling data or attention etc. not realy what is good
Peacetime Google is slow, bumbling, bureaucratic. Wartime Google gets shit done.