For nearly three decades, Google has dominated the online search market. But now, the tech giant finds itself at a crossroads, grappling with public dissatisfaction, legal challenges, and a competitor unlike any it’s faced before.
It isn’t just the antitrust ruling this August that spells trouble. It’s also a growing awareness Google may have aimed its power against small sites that bring original, niche content to the web.
Google has a longstanding reputation for favoring big brands over independent sites. The shift started with the 2009 “Vince” update, which bumped small sites off top search results to make room for major brands. The then-CEO, Eric Schmidt, defended this approach as a way to “sort out the cesspool.” Brands, according to Schmidt, were the solution.
Over the next decade, small publishers grew their audiences on social media. Between links and newsletters, they used those platforms to drive traffic to their site. The result? Small sites began building brand credibility. The perimeter of the “cesspool” was no longer well-defined.
In August 2022, Google ramped up its “cleanup” efforts with a new update — the “Helpful Content Update” (HCU). According to Google, the goal was to reward sites with authentic, user-first content. But the actual result was almost the exact opposite. Even high-traffic, authority sites represented by Google Partner ad agencies like Raptive and Mediavine saw losses.
Despite the collateral damage, Google doubled down. The search giant pushed out more HCU updates in December 2022 and September 2023. Each of these updates wiped out more small sites, and the implications have been brutal. Entire business models were erased, and livelihoods were eliminated. Many of those small, independent voices have had to shut down their sites.
Google’s attitude toward these complaints? They are so pleased with the result of HCU that they rolled it into the core algorithm in March 2024
It’s no wonder that, to many small publishers, the devastation done by this monopoly to their businesses feels entirely intentional — or, at the very least, recklessly indifferent. Also, it’s no wonder that Google’s public image as the champion of the open web is starting to wear thin.
On August 5, 2024, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google violated antitrust laws by maintaining an illegal monopoly over internet search and search advertising markets. Weeks later, the company hand-picked a group of creators for its first-ever Web Creator Conference.
The timing of this meeting wasn’t lost on attendees, who saw it as a cynical move to save face rather than a genuine shift in priorities. The company made clear that companies wouldn’t receive individual advice and no specific assistance. There were also many topics Google wouldn’t discuss with them. Rather, the purpose was for Googlers to ask them questions.
All attendees reported that Google’s engineers seem baffled by how people actually use search. One engineer asked if big brands would be angry if small publishers outranked them. Another wondered why anyone would visit a blog when they could just watch a video on social media.
Small publishers left the conference feeling Google’s disdain for their work ran deeper than ever. To them, the message was clear: the people controlling the algorithm have no real understanding of how the rest of the world lives, works, or even uses the internet.
For many, this disregard feels like a privilege that only a monopoly could get away with. Any other company would have had to listen to the very source of its content — small, independent sites — long before now. However, Google’s monopolistic position has allowed it to bulldoze through complaints, elevating big brands and advertisers at the expense of everyone else.
If anyone questions the harm caused by Google’s monopoly, they need only look at OpenAI’s ChatGPT-powered search. It brings many of the sources buried by Google’s HCU back to the surface, bypassing Google’s increasingly cluttered, ad-heavy results and often unreliable “AI Overviews.”
Here’s the twist: OpenAI’s search is powered by Bing, the same search engine Google has pushed down for years. This makes ChatGPT’s search a new chance for Bing and for the small, independent sites it highlights. And, for the first time, Google can’t force its way to the top.
