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 threadDr Ro SmithOct 4, 2023

@peterbutler realising Google was doing this a few years ago was the big mover for me to use something else. I just didn't get relevant results from it as a search engine anymore.

For people looking for an alternative, Start Page has revolutionised my ability to actually find what I'm looking for. There are ads, but they are clearly labelled and once you scroll past them you see the kind of sites you haven't seen in years, with exactly what you want.

Show threadenchantedsleeper 🌈⭐Oct 4, 2023
@Rhube But Start Page gets its search results from Google and Bing... in this instance, I don't really get how it's better? If it has fewer ads, fair enough, but the results being more relevant probably isn't related to anything they're doing
Show threadDr Ro Smith
@enchantedsleeper it gets completely different results to Google so I don't really know what you mean, but I am way too sick to to give more of my time to this. Bye!
Oct 4, 2023 at 3:01pmWeb
Show threadenchantedsleeper 🌈⭐Oct 4, 2023
@Rhube Apologies; I am not looking for a fight or anything of the sort, I had thought I was joining in a conversation in good faith. No worries.