Google is an advertising engine.
It’s no longer a search engine. That’s just a misnomer to draw people in and keep regulators off their back. Their promise of finding an answer is the premise for the greatest bait and switch in history. Because the information people seek is strip-mined and repurposed between increasing layers of Google advertising and/or other Google products in one form or another.
Even if you’re the brand that people are searching for, you’re not going to be the top result. Unless you outspend your competitors for that top ad spot. Paid search, in other words.
With so much information, ads on Google appear to offer clarity and forward motion. A shortcut to what people want. Who could argue with that?
How about the Justice Department for violating antitrust laws and purposely dumbing down and obfuscating the internet to amp up their advertising revenues?
The digital attention information complex that is Google, Facebook, Instagram et al are rapidly becoming the anti-internet.
Rather than sharing links in open networks (which is the whole point of the internet), these platforms are hellbent on luring people into their domain and then slamming the gates shut forever. Like Homer’s sirens bewitching passing sailors to their deaths.
Google has dramatically reduced organic links across all their properties. All the major players have either prohibited external links altogether or reduced the reach of any posts with external links.
In the interest of ever-higher profits, they’ve taken all the fun and discovery out of the future.
Thanks for nothing, fuckwits!