Is Google Dying? Or Did the Web Grow Up? (theatlantic.com) 106
Google is still useful for many, but the harder question is why its results feel more sterile than they did five years ago. From a report: SEO expert Marie Haynes's theory is that this is the result of Google trying to crack down on misinformation and low-quality content -- especially around consequential search topics. In 2017, the company started talking publicly about a Search initiative called EAT, which stands for "expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness." The company has rolled out numerous quality rater guidelines, which help judge content to determine authenticity. One such effort, titled Your Money or Your Life, applies rigorous standards to any pages that show up when users search for medical or financial information.
"Take crypto," Haynes explained. "It's an area with a lot of fraud, so unless a site has a big presence around the web and Google gets the sense they're known for expertise on that topic, it'll be difficult to get them to rank." What this means, though, is that Google's results on any topic deemed sensitive enough will likely be from established sources. Medical queries are far more likely to return WebMD or Mayo Clinic pages, instead of personal testimonials. This, Haynes said, is especially challenging for people looking for homeopathic or alternative-medicine remedies.
There's a strange irony to all of this. For years, researchers, technologists, politicians, and journalists have agonized and cautioned against the wildness of the internet and its penchant for amplifying conspiracy theories, divisive subject matter, and flat-out false information. Many people, myself included, have argued for platforms to surface quality, authoritative information above all else, even at the expense of profit. And it's possible that Google has, in some sense, listened (albeit after far too much inaction) and, maybe, partly succeeded in showing higher-quality results in a number of contentious categories. But instead of ushering in an era of perfect information, the changes might be behind the complainers' sense that Google Search has stopped delivering interesting results.
"Take crypto," Haynes explained. "It's an area with a lot of fraud, so unless a site has a big presence around the web and Google gets the sense they're known for expertise on that topic, it'll be difficult to get them to rank." What this means, though, is that Google's results on any topic deemed sensitive enough will likely be from established sources. Medical queries are far more likely to return WebMD or Mayo Clinic pages, instead of personal testimonials. This, Haynes said, is especially challenging for people looking for homeopathic or alternative-medicine remedies.
There's a strange irony to all of this. For years, researchers, technologists, politicians, and journalists have agonized and cautioned against the wildness of the internet and its penchant for amplifying conspiracy theories, divisive subject matter, and flat-out false information. Many people, myself included, have argued for platforms to surface quality, authoritative information above all else, even at the expense of profit. And it's possible that Google has, in some sense, listened (albeit after far too much inaction) and, maybe, partly succeeded in showing higher-quality results in a number of contentious categories. But instead of ushering in an era of perfect information, the changes might be behind the complainers' sense that Google Search has stopped delivering interesting results.
SEO Specialists are the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:SEO Specialists are the problem (Score:5, Informative)
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uBlock takes care of those. On Android you can use DNS66 if your browser doesn't support plugins.
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Agreed. It makes me angry when I do a search and the third link down is exactly the same as the first. Except the first is marked as an "Ad".
Re: SEO Specialists are the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
This, Haynes said, is especially challenging for people looking for homeopathic or alternative-medicine remedies.
Good. If you're trying to fix health problems by pumping water up your ass, cramming rocks in your vagina, curing covid with vet pills, rubbing CBD oils on your ass, or any of the other snake oil insanity then you can take the time to scroll past the legit results saying "no, you're an idiot" before arriving at the one random blog telling you that yes, guzzling lemonjuice mixed with gasoline is a sure-fire cure for your self-diagnised gluten "allergy."
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its weird how you put "cramming rocks in your vagina" in a list of other legitimate remedies
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Hey, do you know what they call alternative medicine that works?
2 things for alt medicine to become medicine (Score:4, Informative)
It takes two things for alternative medicine to become medicine: 1. evidence that it works, and 2. the labor of not only collecting the evidence that it works but also putting that evidence in a form that national health care regulators accept. Proponents of alternative medicine claim to have the former and complain of institutional and/or economic barriers to the latter.
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It takes two things for alternative medicine to become medicine: 1. evidence that it works, and 2. the labor of not only collecting the evidence that it works but also putting that evidence in a form that national health care regulators accept. Proponents of alternative medicine claim to have the former and complain of institutional and/or economic barriers to the latter.
Some things are obvious enough that they don't really need all that much. And it doesn't matter what health care regulators say.
My best example is Arnica. It is mistakenly touted as a homeopathic medicine. It is not. It's an actual numbing agent not some diluted weirdness, that does a pretty good job of relieving pain. There are some others that are sorta similar, such as aconite.
I know this because I am allergic to opiates, and have had occasions in the past where I've needed opiate like pain killer
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its weird how you put "cramming rocks in your vagina" in a list of other legitimate remedies
The same way I know that a fire is hot before I shove my hand in it. Common fucking sense.
Re: SEO Specialists are the problem (Score:2)
Pumping water in your ass (aka colon cleansing) is bunk. Basically it just removes shit that your body hasn't yet finished with, so instead of shitting it out tomorrow like you normally would have, you forcibly shat it out today. The end result is you accomplished nothing.
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Still the more sanitary option if you plan on cramming other things up there, especially if those things are still connected to someone else...
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Re: SEO Specialists are the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
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There are alternative places for you to get your alternative news, like Parler and Truth Social. It's probably better that way.
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Your right, I did assume, because it's the extremists on the right that are making all the noise right now. But the left-wing extremists are just as evil, and they too have their own places to congregate on the web.
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Thanks, I learned something, you made me look it up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Donald Trump masterfully used this theory to his advantage. This is why he was able to get both the right-wing extremists (white nationalists, militia groups, rural Americans) behind him, and also the left-wing extremists (anti-immigrant groups, anti-globalization groups). He was so successful that people now think of anti-immigrant and anti-globalization ideologies as being right-wing, though this wasn't the case until rec
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Re:SEO Specialists are the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
One challenge is Google is an advertising company, not a search engine. The challenge of the advertisers at the time Google became popular was that users could block cookies. One approach was obscurification, which was the path of 2o7. If the user couldnâ(TM)t find the cookie, they couldnâ(TM)t block or delete it.
The Google approach was a fair exchange. Users kept the cookie in exchange for services. The search engine, office apps, communication this was googles first mistake as it approached monopoly status. It did not invest in the products it offers as a fair trade for user data, and even began charging money.
Then, there is the fact that the search engine is a commodity often funded by direct advertising. This makes it less desirable and less secure. For instance, I try to know the direct address of my city services this is because Google and DuckDuckGo will try to redirect me to for profit or scam services, mostly ads. It is unreliable. And so useless
Google changed itself into a newt (Score:2)
Just the obligatory joke, but if trust is part of life, then the google is losing it. Badly.
I can't see the google getting better without cutting itself into small pieces, so we better get used to kissing giant newts. (The google ain't the only one.)
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Google already lost it a long time ago when it started basing is search results on ads instead of knowledge.
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There's also a lot of censorship you won't notice unless you search politically charged topics.
Re:Google changed itself into a newt (Score:5, Funny)
how can I ever be a well rounded person if I don't get to read nazi philosophy?
Eat more. Worked for me.
Only other socialists care for national socialism (Score:1)
Just watch the Heard trial vs. what you read on Google News to see censorship. You'd think that he was the one who cut off her finger or pooped on her bed instead of the reverse.
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Rats, I didn't get the Funny. Oh well. It was a feeble attempt. But my main objective was to make sure there was a "safe" anchor point for the discussion--but I was wrong about that. News at 11 (or below).
However I mostly disagree with your analysis. The search results don't need to be tainted in the way you seem to be describing. However, the google is responding to its business model, just like every business does. When the money started flowing from the ads, of course "the way everything works" had to s
Please... please let it be google dying. (Score:1)
for the sake of the world's population.
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And please take Facebook, Instagram and TikTok with you.
Dying? (Score:2)
There seems to be no shortage of companies willing to drop buckets of money on Google to shovel advertising down the gullet of anyone performing a search or watching their "free content". They had almost $300 billion in revenue last year. I don't see any danger of them dying or even shrinking anytime soon.
The web has been monetized. (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that almost all content is somehow tied to making money, simple search doesn't work - but then neither does filtering what people can search. I think the best filter would be to the option to exclude all sites selling something.
-your internet search resulted in 1 item, some results were filtered out due to politics, opinions, or both
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When did this Garden of Eden period exist? I've been on the web since the early summer of '94, and there were pornographers, spammers, thieves, and other assorted hustlers in abundance even then. There have been get rich quick artists from the very beginning of the web. Remember how domains were originally a registration monopoly? Remember how SSL certs were originally issued? There are any number of similar examples where the structure of the web was contorted to funnel money into certain pockets.
Many of t
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Yeah, but there was a time when you could go to page 5 of the search results and avoid anything SEO'd.
Re:The web has been monetized. (Score:4, Interesting)
When did this Garden of Eden period exist? I've been on the web since the early summer of '94, and there were pornographers, spammers, thieves, and other assorted hustlers in abundance even then.
Approximately from 91 through 93 (I am really sorry about when you joined). There were always pornographers but they were well motivated volunteer pornographers trying to inform people about the value of their pornography. The key phrase that ends the era is the Eternal September [wikipedia.org] which in itself seems quaint nowadays. I'm afraid you likely joined as part of the wave that "destroyed" everything.
The key question that will help you understand is "when did it become a bad idea to put your email address on a web page" that comes from Canter and Siegel [wikipedia.org] in 1994. From that point on the loss of innocence was total.
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You were a year late. Google "Eternal September" and "Canter and Siegel".
GeoCities (Score:2)
When all the content was free and people put up what they were interested in simply for the interest of others, search worked.
When did this Garden of Eden period exist?
I'm guessing the period that people have in mind corresponds roughly to when GeoCities was still in operation. (Yes, I'm aware that GeoCities had banners.)
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I would agree with this. If a search term can even possibly be interpreted as something you can buy, sell, or process, then Google will fill the first page with things you can buy.
“I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed.”
Lloyd Dobler "Say Anything"
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I would agree with this. If a search term can even possibly be interpreted as something you can buy, sell, or process, then Google will fill the first page with things you can buy.
I use DDG, but most of my searches tend to be wanting to learn something, so I type something something wikipedia, and I'll get less results trying to sell me stuff.
What seems odd to me (I might be an outlier) is that If I actually want to buy something, I'll go to eBbay, Amazon, or directly to the company I'm interested in.
When I've used basic search, a lot of the links have been to sketchy sites, and clicking on them causes my AV software to go nuts.
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In the early days of the web, I was someone people would ask for advice on where to look for stuff-- somewhat oddly, I found I had a knack for choosing which place to start to find things (sometimes very *odd* things... like, hm that guy Andre Sandberg has a bunch of occult links up maybe... yes, there's something on "The Temple of Set").
Then altavista came out, and you could do a lot with it if you understood booleans and didn't mind skimming through a few screens.
Now that the google roller coaster is c
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Then altavista came out, and you could do a lot with it if you understood booleans and didn't mind skimming through a few screens.
Google has become so difficult to wrestle into delivering what I need that I often long for those Altavista days. And most of it isn't the fault of all the trash Google has to wade through. Most of it is of Google's own doing they have compromised or totally broken things like the "allintext:" operator and double quotes.
A web search is going to be a sewer full of con-artists and the blind leading the blind.
And Google used to do a pretty good job of enabling me to avoid the crap and dig out the good stuff. The crap hasn't gotten that much bigger or worse in the last 5 years - but the user's abi
Works as intended (Score:5, Insightful)
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The quality of Linux related search results has also fallen.
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It's interesting to compare the results for "homeopathic remedy cancer" from Google and Bing. The Google search is really pared down; it doesn't have the usual product ads, and provides links to sites providing reliable information about using homeopathy as a complementary treatment to evidence-based treatment. The Bing search returns product ads and links to sites casting doubts on conventional medicine and promoting alternative treatments. It's more like what you'd have got in Google a few years back.
T
Anyone else? (Score:3)
Does anyone else remember that day in 2020 or so when Google fucked up a rollout and suddenly all the results were unfiltered and much more relevant? I can't find it on Google, of course. I took some screenshots and it was a hot topic of conversation at the time.
As the article says, they're inflicting this damage on themselves, but the gears of their internal DEI machinery are probably unstoppable at this point. They're committed to fighting anything their internal political teams define as misinformation, bias, racism, harmful, violent, etc., even though open access to information was how the company became popular in the first place.
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Google got popular because it indexed a lot of warez and copyright violating porn sites before it IPOed. It did that much better than more mature tech companies that had assets that could be sued.
Experience brings wisdom (Score:4, Insightful)
People in general are only interested in them selves, and will hurt as many people they think they can get away with. But before tuning this into a humanity sucks post, what keep most people away from causing trouble, is their intellect, where they can see their actions could have a long term effect, or some follow religion where they believe in some sort of all seeing eye judging every action they do. But still people will fall threw the cracks, where why we have a complex legal and justice system, but then there still are areas where people will do bad things only for their benefit and not the benefit of others.
There are a lot of people (even if it is a minority, still enough to be a big problem) who will abuse Googles systems for their personal gain, try to make them look big and important enough for people to give them money for snake oil, or to be seen as a public leader in topics you really have no idea on, to help boost your own ego. or you are a willing pawn to help push a cause that someone else tricked you into caring about, but you are so fervent in the belief that you willing to do a lot of harm to get your way.
The Google Algorithm has to keep on changing and adapting to the fact that people will take advantage of how the system works. While yes it might silence a small voice of reason, it often will shut up all the yelling jackasses out there, and try to push a more moderate view of the world.
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push a more moderate view of the world.
Consensus is not evidence. The is no reason to believe moderate view points are the correct ones. There is no reason to believe the views of extremists are correct either just as there is no reason to dismiss them because you don't like what you hear.
Moderate is a word that was invented because people don't like to self identify as what a moderate really is - a conformist
Re:Experience brings wisdom (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no reason to believe the views of extremists are correct either just as there is no reason to dismiss them because you don't like what you hear.
You're right, I don't like what I hear from those extremists who think I and anyone like me should be murdered. I should hear their reasons. Maybe they're right~
Moderate is a word that was invented because people don't like to self identify as what a moderate really is - a conformist
Being contrarian doesn't make you smart.
Re: Experience brings wisdom (Score:2)
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That's pretty silly. While it's true that passing a law saying Pi=3 doesn't do diddly, the majority of political questions are around people's preferences. There's no physical law that determines gun control or abortion rules in a country -- it's how the culture trades off between different values.
And the viewpoints in the middle are by definition the balance point of those tradeoffs. Extremists by definition are those who hold values substantively different than the rest of the population, and are thus dis
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[...] what keep most people away from causing trouble, is their intellect, where they can see their actions could have a long term effect, or some follow religion where they believe in some sort of all seeing eye judging every action they do.
I doubt most people can "see" or would bother seeing the "long term effect" of their actions. Most people likely modify their behavior based on what they see as the short-term effect of their actions. Steal a car or walk around butt naked (in most places), and you get arrested. Liberals and conservatives fundamentally stick to their views because otherwise the Twitter-verse attacks them for losing their political faith.
Looking for homeopathy ? (Score:3, Insightful)
"challenging for people looking for homeopathic or alternative-medicine remedies"
Well, maybe they deserve to have those idiotic beliefs challenged, no ? Powered sugar is still powdered sugar, no matter how much bullshit you spread on it.
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I would be willing give anyone who manages to spread bullshit onto powdered sugar a listen. Doing it the other way around, spreading powdered sugar onto bullshit, is easy, but bullshit onto powdered sugar would be an impressive feat indeed.
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Farmers usually dry it a bit first before spreading.
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Farmers usually dry it a bit first before spreading.
The dried stuff usually burns better. In some areas cow turds are used as fuel.
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Well, maybe they deserve to have those idiotic beliefs challenged, no ?
Yes, they do deserve to have their beliefs challenged. I would go a step farther and say that everyone should have their beliefs challenged from time to time in the search for objective truth.
The double-edged sword at play is that it's tough to challenge beliefs that you yourself to do not fully and completely understand. It's also tough to challenge beliefs when you do not fully understand the mindset of the person you are challenging let alone understand why they hold those beliefs.
A search engine down-ra
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Homeopathic means it's pure water. Not even the good kind if water with minerals in it.
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Homeopathic means it's pure water. Not even the good kind if water with minerals in it.
I tried some distilled water once. Amazing how much flavor the minerals add.
Homeopathy is utter bullshit. But as I noted in another post, there are a few items they promote that work, like Arnica montana.
It's dried flowers of the arnica montana plant - it looks like a type of daisy - you steep it in alcohol, strain it after a few days, and use the tincture as a pain killer. It works. I've had to use it for some sports injuries, as I'm allergic to opoids, asprin, and the amount of acetominiphen to work
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Who cares if its bullshit or not? I'm not sure that's the best form of the arguement that can be made.
If the criterion for censoring (or down-ranking or whatever) a site or set of informaiton is whether it is bullshit or not, then we immediately have a number of quite murky questions to deal with, almost none of which have tidy answers. For example:
- who decides on what is bullshit or not?
- is it really sensible to only allow (or at least, to strongly disincentivise) access to information that is 'true' or
No (Score:2)
It seems that the useless links are increasing but it's still possible to find useful stuff
Ads = quality results (Score:1)
Both are True (Score:1)
I hope
It thinks it knows best (Score:5, Insightful)
When I look for something, it returns 5 ads and 100 pages of things that it thinks I might have meant, instead of just fucking search for what I entered, even with Verbatim.
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mostly ads (Score:2)
Google optimized for ads. The majority of the first page of results are paid placements, not much room left for actual search results.
FakeSearch instead of SafeSearch (Score:3, Insightful)
If people want to see get-rich-quick schemes, homeopathic "cures," and conspiracy theories in their results, then maybe Google needs to give them an option for that. Just like they use SafeSearch to filter out offensive material, but allow you to opt out of that if you choose, Google could offer FakeSearch, which allows you to more easily find information that isn't true.
BP's Deepwater Horizon money (Score:2)
So now we're supposed to trust Google search results or think that they're served up for our benefit
What? (Score:2)
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It's all the AI (Score:3)
Google now generates search result for you, years ago you picked from the search results. Googles goal seems to be getting the search results to you in the first page, to do this from my experience they only give you the popular results so your seeing what everyone else would see if that term is searched for. This comes at the expense of being able to find what you want to find, if you are not searching for whatever everyone else is searching for. Google has gone mainstream and gives you 'mainstream' results. AI makes it worse, because the AI can tailor results for you, but if you are looking for something specific, the AI will be trained on to whatever everyone else was looking for and the information is probably grouped and search results returned for the type of person you are.
I personally have a problem with this because I look for specific information all the time through my work and can't find it. Even when using the advanced search modifiers, it becomes impossible to find specific information. I personally think we need another search engine that uses more antiquated indexing.
The other problem is shopping results, search engines on amazon, ebay and google will give you horizontal results even when you put quotes around the search.
I think the biggest problem is the web has got too big and it makes it hard to index and search. But I hope someone will make a tool that makes the web searchable again.
Google knows who you are (Score:2)
Where you go, what you buy, what you think.
So no, it does not show you what others want to see, but what Google wants YOU to see.
Unbalanced Power (Score:3)
Everyone would like to shut down 'disinformation', but the coalitions disagree on what counts as disinformation. That distrust is good. Everyone wants the power to do something about disinformation, but no one will trust everyone else with that power. The stalemate is protection of freedom of expression.
If Google does their best to knock down disinformation then I am for it, but if I disagree with how they do it then I will readily use a competitor. That there are a multitude of options is good for us. Competition is a good answer.
See how China is locking down streamers [slashdot.org] as a counter-example of what is possible when the power is too concentrated:
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Indeed, Hunter Biden's laptop was "a Russian hoax" and saying otherwise was "disinformation"
Plenty of other examples of reality and fact being called "disinformation"
Right now Biden is running his mouth off about "lies" when the ineptness and stupidity of his failing administration is pointed out.
Re:Unbalanced Power (Score:5, Insightful)
Gotta love the conservative enthusiasm over things like Hilary's email server or Hunter Biden's laptop, meanwhile trying to find a conservative to say anything negative about our last president that literally tried to overturn our own country's democratic election is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
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Some low lifes rioting in capital building can't overthrow anything. No one wandering around in the capital building even had a gun, some "insurrection".
Ha, nice but wrong reference. How about changing out state electors to ones who will vote for you? But maybe you dont follow the news much https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]
The rest of your post is indicative of how extreme the modern Republican party has become, everything left of far right is "extreme" and terrible and anyone who dares question the dear leader (including those in their own party) are the enemy.
Biden family are criminals (and pedophiles), look forward to their stomping with investigations and nasty things airing out starting November.
I thought Hillary was the pedophile. So is pedophile just the go to slander for brain dead Republ
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I'm not a Republican, guess again, binary brain. Hilarious you think anyone who shits on Biden can be only one other thing.
Oh so you missed news during primaries when mothers came out about Biden's groping and sniffing and talking, and we've seen the sniffing. Methinks you're the braindead one in denial.
Meanwhile, most the country doesn't give a shit about Jan 6 and rioting low lifes, we're instead concerned about Biden and his numbskull administration fucking up one thing after another.
Democrats sure wer
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I'm not a Republican, guess again, binary brain. Hilarious you think anyone who shits on Biden can be only one other thing.
Eh, you caught me saying Republican instead of conservative. Good for you.
The rest of your post is just nonsense. You're pathetically trying to demonize Biden while more and more evidence comes out of our last president literally trying to over throw our democracy.
Meanwhile, most the country doesn't give a shit about Jan 6 and rioting low lifes
Pay attention. I've already corrected you once that I am in no way referring to the January 6th riots. As I've said from the very beginning I am talking about Trump trying to over throw the election. Try to keep up with the conversation.
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Past president did not run economy into the ground while inciting crime in big cities and he's not in power now, I don't give a shit about him. Biden the senile pedophile is leading the charge into the USA becoming 3rd world crap hole.
Conservative? Maybe on some things like guns, but I'd like for Wall street market transactions to be taxed a tiny bit to pay for health including dental and eye and education. I'd like federal government to come up with serious plan to bootstrap and transition to green ener
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Past president did not run economy into the ground while inciting crime in big cities and he's not in power now, I don't give a shit about him. Biden the senile pedophile is leading the charge into the USA becoming 3rd world crap hole.
Please, Trump did plenty to encourage everything you state here. His massive cash handouts did plenty to cause our labor shortage / inflation problems we're having now. His belligerence and complete non-sympathy for the racial issues of today certainly inflamed the public during the BLM protests (not to mention the lawlessness of Jan 6th he was happy to encourage). Trump's desire to only represent his own people and not the nation in general as every other post war president has done created some very big s
It's been bad for years now... (Score:2)
A web search on any topical subject tends to yield a screen full of links to MSM news "sources", all of which are typically rewrites of the same AP story and say very little (with a maximum amount of javascript and auto-play video ads).
Google originally worked well by analysing the network of existing links, but it's success meant that people stopped doing their own link-farming, so they switched to tracking click data, and as the popularity of the web increased, the group that the click data has been tra
This term... (Score:1)
Google needs a new service (Score:2)
“Do no evil” revocation killed GOOG (Score:2)
Search was for sale and the results reflected that Google had philosophically monetized its users as its most valuable product.
If you want riff-raff, just use (Score:1)
...Bing
Google is in the advertising business (Score:2)
Google isn't dying. It was never alive. (Score:2)
TFA is the most unmitigated clickbait garbage I've seen in a long from The Atlantic.
Google is a vacuum cleaner hoovering up everything in sight and indexing it for searching.
If it's only "good" stuff is hoovered up, you get good results from almost any question. Bad questions get you the good stuff along with the unfiltered crap.
With all the SEO "artists" gaming the system, and people seeming to studiously avoiding doing ANY thinking... Well, they get what they put into it.
"Natural language" AI is an effor
Google is the worst... (Score:2)
except for all the others.
Seriously! Who does better?
Bing? Nope. Duck Duck Go has nice, anonymized results, but better? No.
Personally, I find what I'm looking for on the first one or two results, just about every time.
No (Score:1)
You can't kill something that doesn't have a soul.
crypto clearly isn't the solution (Score:1)
> have argued for platforms to surface quality, authoritative information above all else, even at the expense of profit.
Crypto people's answer to this is that all content needs to be removed from the internet and replaced with marketing bullshit, and move the actual content behind paywall.
800 pound gorilla... (Score:1)
ecosia (Score:2)
Now a days https://www.ecosia.org/ [ecosia.org] is my default search engine. If I don't get relevant results I am using google.com
idiots all the way down (Score:2)
For years, researchers, technologists, politicians, and journalists have agonized and cautioned against the wildness of the internet
This is the heart of the problem.
Each one of these groups felt qualified to shoot off their pie hole. They were the people least qualified to understand what actually made the internet good.
Even the insiders tinkering with algorithms at search engine companies didn't really understand. Sometimes users did a search that resembled using the phone book, other times they spent two hours looking at pictures of underwater caves. Tentatively they created the metric that the more time spent on the page and the m