Peter ButlerOct 3, 2023

"I have spent decades looking for examples of Google putting its enormous thumb on the scale to censor or amplify certain results, and it hadn’t even occurred to me that Google just flat out deletes queries and replaces them with ones that monetize better.”

Absolutely bonkers. The Google antitrust trial discovered that Google is actually *changing user queries* in order to generate results that give more sponsored ads

https://www.wired.com/story/google-antitrust-lawsuit-search-results/

#Google #Antitrust #Fraud

A Note From WIRED Leadership

WIRED
Show threadPeteOct 4, 2023
@peterbutler Just… Wow! This makes me feel even more that we are just pawns in corporate games. Long live DuckDuckGo!
Show threadDr Ro Smith
@98Percent @peterbutler DuckDuckGo isn't much better for me these days, but I started using Start Page and suddenly, for the first time in years, I am getting the result I actually wanted!
Oct 4, 2023 at 8:57amWeb
Show threadenchantedsleeper 🌈⭐Oct 4, 2023
@Rhube @98Percent @peterbutler I've got to say, I ran the sample search term included in the article ("children's clothing") on both Google and DDG. On DDG I expected/hoped to receive some informative results on the history of children's clothes or the like, but both were shopping websites all the way down. It may be just an example, but I don't see that Google is doing much that's different here. (Of course, DDG runs on Bing, which is Microsoft, which is also hella corporate...)
Show threadPeteOct 6, 2023
@Rhube @peterbutler I hadn’t tried Start page. Now I have and I like it to the extent that I have made it my default search engine on my default browser. Thank you