Google Search initially gained popularity because users expected it to serve them the best, most relevant answers from across the web when they searched for something — and to help them connect with that content. But over time, Google has changed its model, in part because it wants to keep users on sites it controls (search results pages, YouTube, and so on) for as long as possible so that it can collect more information about them and display more ads.

For local searches — things like a search for a pediatrician in Chicago, a plumber in Miami, or a restaurant in Madrid — Google doesn’t use its standard organic search algorithm to produce responses. Instead, it promotes a limited set of results drawn exclusively from reviews that Google collects over the more relevant results users would get if Google just applied its organic search algorithm.

This subverts Google’s original purpose of providing users with the most relevant content: One study by an economist at the Federal Trade Commission even found that Google’s own reviews tend to be of lower quality than those on some of the sites that Google excludes from the top results. This is especially concerning because Google has maintained an illegal monopoly in general online search, as was recently determined by a U.S. federal judge, meaning users don’t have many other serious and easily accessible search options.

In 2004, Larry Page, Google’s co-founder, told Playboy Magazine, “We want you to come to Google and quickly find what you want. Then we’re happy to send you to the other sites. In fact, that’s the point. The portal strategy tries to own all of the information…. [Competing search engines don’t] necessarily provide the best results; it provides [their] results. Google conscientiously tries to stay away from that. We want to get you out of Google and to the right place as fast as possible.”

By prioritizing its own results, Google has embraced the very model abhorred by its co-founders in 2004. What changed?
When users perform a search on Google, information in the search results page comes from one of three buckets: ads, “answers,” and “organic” ten blue links. When Page did his interview in 2004, Google’s search results consisted of ads and ten blue links. Google isn’t a charity and it should have the right to run advertisements. “Blue links” are the meritocratic list of sites sorted according to relevance based on a users’ query. 

Beginning in 2007, the third category – “answers” – began to emerge. When and how to serve answers is more complicated.

Seeing a “4” on the screen when a user enters “2+2” is handy, but it’s not without cost. If someone runs a calculator website, showing the “4” could lead to the calculator website's traffic decline, making it harder to sustain it. Google must, therefore, make tradeoffs. Some of the decisions Google has made are good for users, but not always: Giving billions of users a quick answer to a totally objective query like [2+2] seems like it outweighs the cost of lost traffic to the calculator website operator.

But what if the “answer” being served up is to the query “best pediatrician mountain view ca?”. The web has a rich, competitive offering of services to help answer such a question, yet Google gives itself exclusive access to the prime real estate of the page. By doing this, users are worse off because they don’t get the best answers right away — and over time the sites that are excluded from the top search results might have a harder time producing content.

Google should embrace two goals to match users with the best possible information at the top of results:

Google can make design choices that protect the health of the open web and give answers to users. That's what it means to focus on the user.