Mesmerising interactive long read on the enormous influence that accrues by becoming the gateway - and gatekeeper - between consumers and producers. Google’s two decade long position as the dominant search engine for the web has meant standardisation of web design, information architecture, coding styles and even programming paradigms, as individualism inevitably makes way for optimisation. I’m including this post not only because it is a fantastic read of the
Google era of the Web, but because it also provides guidance on what we might expect in every future battle for platform dominance i.e open vs closed source AI