Google is now the only search engine that can surface results from Reddit, making one of the web’s most valuable repositories of user generated content exclusive to the internet’s already dominant search engine.
If you use Bing, DuckDuckGo, Mojeek, Qwant or any other alternative search engine that doesn’t rely on Google’s indexing and search Reddit by using “site:reddit.com,” you will not see any results from the last week.
Imagine if this becomes a trend though. Every decent-sized website has an exclusivity deal with one search engine. At that point either google becomes the only functional search engine because it successfully monopolised too much of the web, or search engines in general become useless becaue every one of them is missing too many websites
Yeah this is some serious anticompetitive practices here. Teddy Roosevelt would be fuming
Search engines are rapidly becoming a thing of the past.
Google decided a few years ago that quality doesn’t matter (and they’re right, the monopoly they have means that their quality doesn’t matter for a good long while) but over the long term that’s sitting themselves in the foot.
This is just phase 2, installing fences around your market.
Phase 2 is often legal, so I’m waiting for some patent battles or something like that too, but the effect is the same.