Almost every single person I know uses Google.com for searches; most use the Omnibox in Google Chrome, so they use Google without actually going to Google.com. This is the number one vehicle that Google has in its arsenal to take over the world - mindshare.
When Google conquered Internet search in the early 2000s, it was strictly a Web company and faced only Web competitors. Since then it has only rarely ventured out of the friendly confines of the Web world. The 2005 launch of its controversial "book search," which enraged the New York publishing...