Is there a serious competitor to Google Search?
Like, not a distant competitor like Bing that poses some hypothetical future threat, but like, a present threat to Google Search that they battle against daily.
Likewise for the major other properties - Gmail? YouTube?
The only products where there is IMO intense daily competition is Android and Chrome, where Google's dominance is far from complete. In Google's top money-making properties the competition is pretty mild, and IMO we're seeing user-hostile changes because of it.
I would liken McDonald's more to Android than to Google Search. It exists in a furiously competitive landscape where market share moves significantly year-to-year, and despite being a dominant brand within its space it doesn't even come close to owning the entire space.
In any case, that's neither here nor there, I would like to engage with something you brought up that I do think is interesting:
> "On the other hand, if consumers are actively seeking out sesame seed buns, there is absolutely a point at which they notice and say, what the hell, this brand hardly has any sesame seeds, I'm going to buy the competing brand that still has a normal amount of sesame seeds."
This is true! And I think this moment is coming for Google. You are right - there are limits to how much you can shit up a product before consumers respond. I think the main thrust of your idea is legitimate: while a near-monopoly in a product category gives you a lot of leeway to fuck about with the product, that leeway is not infinite! At some point you're accountable to your users!
The argument isn't so much whether or not that threshold exists (IMO it clearly does), it's what happens organizationally when the company reaches that threshold and can't deal with it. If you've spent the last 10 years staffing your corporate management with sesame-removers, what happens when you finally hit the thresholds and your customers flee?
That to me is the more interesting question - whether or not Google's culture and staffing can navigate what's coming. They have hobbled along on early successes for too long, and IMO it remains to be seen if they are constitutionally able to handle a product crisis.