In a recent article, the New York Times notes that as the Masters of the Universe at Google faces antitrust scrutiny, it’s becoming clear that the company’s complete index of the internet makes it unrivaled in the web search space.
The New York Times writes in an article titled “Google Dominates Thanks to an Unrivaled View of the Web,” that in the year 2000, just two years after Google was founded, the company reached a milestone — it became the world’s largest search engine with an index of more than one billion web pages.
The Times notes that no other tech company has managed to catch up to Google’s vast search index that grows constantly and today indexes somewhere between 500 billion and 600 billion web pages. Now as Google faces antitrust lawsuits from the Justice Department and state regulators, it’s becoming clear that Google’s sheer size has allowed it to easily squash competitors.
Matt Wells, a tech entrepreneur who started a search engine 20 years ago named Gigablast which boasts an index of around five billion web pages, commented: “If people are on a search engine with a smaller index, they’re not always going to get the results they want. And then they go to Google and stay at Google. A little guy like me can’t compete.”
The Times writes:
Understanding how Google’s search works is a key to figuring out why so many companies find it nearly impossible to compete and, in fact, go out of their way to cater to its needs.
Every search request provides Google with more data to make its search algorithm smarter. Google has performed so many more searches than any other search engine that it has established a huge advantage over rivals in understanding what consumers are looking for. That lead only continues to widen, since Google has a market share of about 90 percent.
Google directs billions of users to locations across the internet, and websites, hungry for that traffic, create a different set of rules for the company. Websites often provide greater and more frequent access to Google’s so-called web crawlers — computers that automatically scour the internet and scan web pages — allowing the company to offer a more extensive and up-to-date index of what is available on the internet.
Read more at the New York Times here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
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