Breaking Up With Google

or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Alternatives

May 28, 2026 | Jonathan Burdick

In Erie, Pennsylvania, the term "World Wide Web" didn't appear in the local Erie Times-News until March 1995. This was nearly two years after the World Wide Web was released into the public domain by its inventor, Tim Berners-Lee. "Might as well be as upfront," reporter Dave Richards wrote. "When it comes to computerspeak, I don't know gigabytes from Gidget." The article discussed ErieNet, the city's first commercial internet provider, which was being offered for $20 per month (roughly $45 today adjusted for inflation). 

"You could spend a lifetime surfing and still feel like you need more time," a clearly awed Richards continued. "The concept is so mind-boggling, the possibilities so vast, that contemplating it gives me a headache." He wrote how "Internet fever" had "erupted" with a staggering ten million people surfing the Web for "information, entertainment, games, dirty talk, whatever." 

Around this time, my grandfather had purchased a computer that he was only somewhat able to navigate without his grandchildren's help. I was only ten years old, but I vividly remember CompuServe, my first experience with the web. After a year or so, he then signed up for pay-per-minute American Online with one of those CDs he probably snagged for free at the grocery store with the promise of 700 free hours. AOL was an absolutely game changer. As young as I was, I recognized that my world had changed. There was my brief life before I experienced the internet. And then there was whatever this magical digital sorcery was. 

"Now, if someone tries to monopolize the Web," Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, said in a 1994 interview, "then that would make me unhappy." Berners-Lee, as previously noted, famously gave away his invention for free, putting the software in the public domain. It was, in his mind, the only way the World Wide Web would work.

"We gave the web away to everyone," Berners-Lee wrote in 2025. But it's clear what came after reflects his fears from 1994. The web changed a lot between 1995 to 2005. Then it changed even more between 2005 and 2015. Then it transformed, perhaps predictably, into something  barely recognizable between 2015 and 2025.

To reiterate, this is the person who invented the World Wide Web. 

We could go into each one of these platforms and corporations separately, but we all know them. There have been plenty of words written by smarter people explaining why these tech corporations, which have overwhelmingly monopolistic grips on their markets, have moved beyond improvement and innovation to focus instead on growth and shareholder appeasement above all else. This has led to widespread platform decay. Or as writer Cory Doctrow coined it in 2022: enshittification.

"Remember the first time you used Google search? It was like magic," Doctrow wrote in 2024. "After years of progressively worsening search quality from Altavista and Yahoo, Google was literally stunning, a gateway to the very best things on the internet." Then they bulldozed their way to a 90 percent market share. "Not coincidentally, Google’s search is getting progressively, monotonically worse. It is a cesspool of botshit, spam, scams, and nonsense," he continued. "Essentially, Google is saying that they don’t need to spend money on quality, because we’re all locked into using Google search."

That was written two years ago. Two weeks ago, the backlash against Google accelerated dramatically online:

• "Google Search Is Dead," declared Gizmodo. "Welcome to the Era of the ‘Intelligent Search Box.'"

• "Google shifts to AI search, heralding major change in how people use the internet," read TIME Magazine. 

• "Google Search AI Overhaul Leaves Publishers Bracing For ‘Google Zero,'" Forbes published.

To be fair, there was some positivity out there about the changes. I haven't seen much though. For every article with something encouraging to say, there have been a dozen others ranging from mild critiques and concerns to OMG! It's the end of the interwebs as we know it.

I'm guilty as charged in all of this. Complicit. This very website is made with Google Sites. I'm still anchored to my Gmail accounts. A few years ago, I abandoned Microsoft Office after frustrations with their subscription services and started using the free Google Docs. For my research and writing, I still use Google Books for out-of-publication public domain scans as well as their (mostly abandoned but still very useful) Google Magazine and Google Newspaper archives.

I've been in a slow break up with Google for awhile now though. The good times were good, sure, but I recognize how toxic our codependency has been in recent years. It started with web browsers. I ditched Google Chrome. First, there are no perfect browsers. But there are many better than Chrome. Even in my peak Chrome usage, I always kept Firefox, which remains solid, but I also added Vivaldi and Opera GX to the lineup on both my laptop and phone. I can't imagine ever going back to Chrome now.

Transitioning away from other Google products like Gmail, which I've been using for twenty years, and Google Docs will provide their own sets of challenges, but hey, we all moved on from those Hotmail, AOL, and Yahoo accounts and WordPerfect, right?

For search engines, it's a little more tricky. I rely on search engines significantly both as a teacher and for my research and writing, particularly for finding all those obscure digital archives that learned language models don't currently crawl and steal from. Google at its best was, well... the best. But that was before Google began deliberately sabotaging their product in their quest to make us the product.  There are plenty of options beyond Google. 

My primary alternatives lately have been NoAI.DuckDuckGo.com and Startpage. I've been dabbling with other search engines in recent months though, including Kagi, Mojeek, and Brave. All have pros and cons. I find myself using them all differently. 

None may be as good as Google was at its peak, but by using them (and not using Google) promotes a climate of competition and challenges the monopolistic nonsense. It also just, you know, feels pretty good. In the meantime, while you ponder your digital future, if this conversation online recently has been of interest, I would highly recommend these following books I've read recently. They are all very different from one another, but collectively help inform a bigger picture of what in the wide world of sports is going on with the web.

One common thread among so many who envision a better future for the internet: a clear understanding of what's at stake if we get this wrong, but also a thread of cautious optimism. 

As Berners-Lee wrote last year, "Somewhere between my original vision for web 1.0 and the rise of social media as part of web 2.0, we took the wrong path. We’re now at a new crossroads, one where we must decide if AI will be used for the betterment or to the detriment of society. ... We have the technical capability to give that power back to the individual."