Google - marginally useful at best

The "search" function of Google has become a hellscape.

Once upon a time searching with Google was an exciting and fun adventure. You could search and see what came up. Or you could narrow your search with Boolean operators and quotes.

It was like, well, like this:

But, there was money to be made and Google turned into this:

A walled garden is fine if you are searching for things to buy, and you don’t care if you are limited to a curated list of products from de facto business partners. But, it is very hard to look over that wall and see what else may be out there.

What if you are just, I don’t know, doing some research on the 2024 election, and you want to know the percentage of Black voters in the United States -

A frustrating nightmarish hellscape.

Yeah, yeah, pretty flowers and look at the butterflies. But I just wanted some data, and there was a time when you could ask that question and get this type of response:

Oh, look, ChatGPT answered my question.

Google used to have, in their official code of conduct, “Don’t be evil.” This began to be phased out in 2015 and was officially dropped in 2018, replaced with corporate speak that hints at ethics.

It can be argued that their true, official if not publicized code is: