Google got a massive leg up on the rest be having a better service. When Bing first came out, I was not impressed with what I got, and never really bothered going back to it.

Search quality isn't what it used to be, but the inertia is still paying dividends. That same inertia also applied to Google ads.

I'm not nearly so convinced OpenAI has the same leg up with ChatGPT. ChatGPT hasn't become a verb quite like google or Kleenex, and it isn't an indispensable part of a product.

I actually find bing better now for more technical searches.

Most technical Google searches end up at win fourms or official Microsoft support site which is basically just telling you that running sfc scannow for everything is the fix.

If you are ending up at win forums or Microsoft's support site then the chances are that you were searching for something Microsofty in the first place. And if that's the case then it's hardly surprising that Microsoft's own search engine is better for promoting Microsoft-related responses than any other.

Try searching for something technical which isn't MS-specific. That should be a more neutral test.

You're not wrong. I've been doing all of windows server (eww) work lately

google's moat is a combination of it being free and either being equal to or outright better than competitors

Google has always been much better than the competition. Even today with their enshittification, competitors still aren’t as good.

The only thing that has changed that status quo is the rise of audiovisual media and sites closing up so that Google can’t index them, which means web search lost a lot of relevance.