Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click
So a common trope in the startup world is the difference between a feature and a company, the idea being that lots of features are masquerading as companies. This inevitably leads to them being shocked--SHOCKED--when some bigger player adds that feature, eating their lunch.<p>I feel the same way about a lot of outbound sites on Google. There are a bunch of things I just don&#x27;t want to go to another site for. Off the top of my head:<p>- Exchange rates. Although this one I find infuriating because Google doesn&#x27;t know how to correctly round off exchange rates (as in, there&#x27;s a standard). This manifests as, say, showing 2 decimal places for AUD&#x2F;USD when they should be showing 4.<p>- Calculator<p>- Mortgage calculator<p>- Song lyrics<p>That sort of thing. If you go to any sites that provide these sorts of things they&#x27;re typically &quot;scummy&quot;. Lots of ads, lots of Javascript, lots of dark patterns to make you load more page views (eg a mortgage calculator that&#x27;ll mysteriously take 3 steps&#x2F;page loads to calculate).<p>I&#x27;m glad these are in search results, typically in significantly better versions. And I don&#x27;t think anyone who runs a site built around a basic formula for interest calculations has any right to complain about it.<p>Of course this will be painted as &quot;where does it end?&quot; but not every surface is a slippery slope.<p>Just look at the likes of Yelp who complains about Google &quot;stealing&quot; their content. Well, Yelp is about one of the scummiest businesses out there. So I won&#x27;t feel sorry for them, not now, not ever.<p>The one weird case here is AMP. Like I get Google&#x27;s motivations here. Many companies develop terrible mobile sites that run badly or not at all and AMP IS much faster, generally speaking. Yet still it seems so heavyhanded with seemingly no opt out (on the consumer or publisher side). I don&#x27;t really understand why Google wants to die on this particular hill.