Average users do care. How do you think google got to be so popular?

Why Google became popular is way to complex a topic for a thread like this, but no, average user at this point does not with any meaningful cadence look for other search engines to use and likely started using Google not because they compared it to others, but because someone told them to use it. If you’re doing more than five searches a day, you’re not average.

To add to this, most non-tech people I know just type their search in the URL bar and it goes wherever it goes, usually to google. They even do this with actual urls, without the .com or whatever at the end and just click on the google search result for the link they wanted to go to. As someone who has meticulously hand-crafted search queries since the altavista days of the web, it still stuns me when I see it.

We haven't done a very good job of explaining how the web or browsers work to the general public, let alone the landscape of search engine companies.

Most non-tech people I know start typing and use the autocomplete of their previous visit.