[chadbang]

I've always seen the Web as becoming as annoying as commercial television. It was a fun free-for-all for awhile, but there's no way those happy-go-lucky-folk on Wall Street were pumping billions into the Web without seeing *JACKPOT!* in its future. Now those great search gods, Google, are turning the Web into something even more insidious - a personalized marketing machine. Love Amazon? Get ready to find limited interesting, obscure results for the term "monkey," and LOTS of Amazon products on your results page. Hmm, SEARCH: Adolph Hitler TOP RESULT: "Hitler - the Lost Years on DVD - An HBO Mini Series - ONLY ON AMAZON!" I can imagine everyone here will soon be seeing LOTS of electronic store results whenever you Google "Grado" "Head" "Phone" or "Cord" or "Electricity" or ..... Maybe it's not Big Brother, but more like Mr. AMWAY. The ultimate annoying salesman who's managed to get inside your door.


Google’s Personalized Results: The “New Normal” That Deserves Extraordinary Attention

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[linuxworks]

google search is no better than ANY other, these days. it was once the king of search engines but now its MOSTLY sales! BUY this, SELL that, HERE'S MY YAHOO P.O.S. STORE! BUY FROM ME!!

buy buy buy.

no reasearch articles or even good reviews come up on search strings these days. the commercial sites have BOMBARDED google (et al) and so the search results are usually junk.

I laugh when people think google 'does no evil'. they are a modern day *advertising company* (I keep thinking of the bewitched tv series from many decades ago, where derwood (lol) was an 'adman'. google is today's version of that, essentially).

and google happily reports dissidents to various governments. no privacy here!

be careful about glamorizing google. they are as evil as any modern stockholder-hold company. the fact that they try to convince people about 'not doing evil' is pretty twisted ;(

 

[Bones13]

It was the king over the past few years. Now half the first two pages will be "nextag" or similar other search engine results.

Bing did not look to be any better though.

Not sure where I would go from Google to at this point, but hoping something comes back that worked like the google of old.

 

[chadbang]

You guys are right. Obviously what will happen is the emergence of an open source search engine that will put things back in reality like in the early google days. Maybe an educational backed system that will filter ADS! ADS! ADS!

 

[thrillmetoo]

Well it's no rocket science nor something really new, but it's doing a nice job filtering out the most pesky commercial links.
Give me back my GOOGLE™

 

[craiglester]

you guys know you can turn off the personalised search right?