Who is surprised that Gurgle would do this?
It’s very sad. I remember when I could find anything I wanted to find on Google. I know of stories I’ve read in the past and tried to search for later only to get totally irrelevant results or even results asserting the opposite of what I looked for. They definitely censor stories. I am surprised, but only because I remember when they were focused on quality of results. Now they are something else. Maybe drunk with power, or a tool of larger powers, political animals, beholden to big contracts… who knows.
It’s time for something else to take their place. Maybe AI will do a better job. I’ve been playing with Cortana and other AI for some things - not for search so much, but for giving me ideas or improving things I’ve already started. And I don’t use the results they give exactly (I don’t plagiarize) I take what it gives me to spur on new ideas and send me in new directions. One AI answer gives me an idea to search for another answer or explore a detail or tangent further. Sometimes it just gives me a better word, which is an improvement. But it doesn’t replace search for me (maybe it will) and I don’t have faith it will be any better when it comes to neutral service.
And it’s time to break Google up. Definitely strip their ad business from their other businesses. Maybe spin off their data center business off too.
But the Google AdSense rejection told us what we could do to make our way into the good graces of the company that dominates online search and advertising, controlling what much of the country and the world sees. All we had to do was stop talking about Islamic terrorism.
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Daniel Greenfield's website: The Sultan Knish blog