Which is why Google was the first search engine ever, and before that people just banged rocks together in the general vicinity of phone lines, because any prior search engine would have had an insurmountable first-mover advantage that Google could not possibly have overcome?

While I agree with the general point you are making - the Internet as a whole had not reached a general populace tipping point until after Google was a major player in search.

I think we, as technologically included people, tend to overestimate how old the internet is to most people outside of maybe early email usage.

Also the implosion of companies (like Yahoo) is a factor here. If Yahoo hadn't been really stupid they would still be dominant - and it would have been hard to stop them.

Of course people can overtake when the leader throws the lead... but it's luck and also hard.

> [...] the Internet as a whole had not reached a general populace tipping point until after Google was a major player in search.

MySpace vs Facebook happened after Google rose to dominance.

Also, Google Video vs YouTube.

MySpace was at it's largest in 2005 - at that point Google was nearly 40% of online search traffic. It had been a major player for a while - hell it had already had a huge IPO by that point.

I think you forget just how FAST Google blew up. In 1999 they were basically nothing - by 2004 they were the largest search company on the internet.

Facebook wasn't even a thing until 2004 - after the Google IPO. So no, Myspace vs Facebook didn't happen after that.

Also Google Video was just plain crap. It's like comparing Google+ to Facebook, it was never going to last.

I think you forget just how much better at search Google was. Google's replacement will probably be much better at privacy.

No, I don't. It really was amazing and a no-brainer to switch. That said Yahoo could have still stayed ahead - they nearly bought Google after all.

Remember though that accurate results is a clear market winning feature - we've seen that the average user quite simply doesn't care about privacy that much.

Yeap. We're all still using Altavista, MySpace, Hotmail and Livejournal.

While I agree with the sentiment, I would argue that the network effects now are significantly stronger than they were 10-15 years ago. Back then, the internet was still a novelty for many (those who had the internet, anyway). This was before broadband was commonplace, before smartphones, before Facebook and the iPhone were a thing.

The network effect becomes even stronger now, as the Internet crosses the chasm. Grandma won't switch from Facebook soon, unlike her teen techie granddaughter.