MAYER: When you see the quality of your search results go down, it’s natural to blame Google and be like, “Why are they worse?” To me, the more interesting and sophisticated thought is if you say, “Wait, but Google’s just a window onto the web. The real question is, why is the web getting worse?”
DUBNER: Okay, Marissa. “So Google’s just a window onto the web. Why is the web getting worse?”
MAYER: I think because there’s a lot of economic incentive for misinformation, for clicks, for purchases. There’s a lot more fraud on the web today than there was 20 years ago. And I think that the web has been able to grow and develop as quickly as it has because of less regulation and because it’s so international. But we also have to take the flipside of that. In a relatively unregulated space, there’s going to be economic misincentives that can sometimes degrade quality. And that does put a lot of onus on the brokers who are searching that information to try and overcome that. And it’s difficult. It kind of has to be more, in my view, of an ecosystem-style reaction, rather than just a simple correction from one actor.