In Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, Al Ries and Jack Trout said, “Positioning is not what you do to a product. Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect.” So consider what’s happening in the minds of everyone who has long depended on Google to be what it has always been—a search engine for the Web—when they consider what they’re seeing from Google now, and reading in stories such as these:
- Google Search as You Know It is Over (TechCrunch)
- Google Shifts to AI Search, Heralding Major Change in How People Use the Internet (in Time)
- Is Google about to destroy the web? (BBC)
- The Death of Google Search (Impact Lab)
- Google Just Killed the Search Engine (in Banyan Hill)
- Google Has Abandoned What Made People Love Google (in How To Geek)
By forking itself away from search, Google is also forking over the Web—and creating a giant opening for somebody else to grab the Web Search position.
Who would that be?
Microsoft’s Bing is one candidate, but Bing’s UI is a NASCAR of promotional jive. (See what Steve Jobs says about Microsoft here. Cuts like a scalpel.)
DuckDuckGo is the other. Its position is privacy. That’s good, but Web Search is better now, because the position is available. Google isn’t abandoning search, but now they’d rather be “your helpful assistant” and “personal shopper” than the Web’s “librarian.” (Source: Google Gemini.) To make that shift, Google has compromised Web search, and the Web with it.)
Conveniently, DuckDuckGo already has a search engine for the Web. They can sharpen that position while keeping—or even expanding —their privacy one. And help save the Web in the process.
They’re already on the case. See what they’re saying on Threads, BlueSky, Xitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
They should also add “Does pure Web search by default” and “No AI extension” to their list of things they do and Google doesn’t:
Anyway, glad to help.
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