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Comment by f_allwein | Hacker News Reader

From the speech transcript [ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16237684 ]:

“Social media companies deceive their users by manipulating their attention and directing it towards their own commercial purposes. They deliberately engineer addiction to the services they provide. This can be very harmful, particularly for adolescents. There is a similarity between internet platforms and gambling companies.”

Good points to raise, but as a former Googler, I’m a bit surprised how he does not distinguish between Google and FB at all. Are we all Google addicted then? Remember Google’s main business, Search, is still about getting you away from Google as quick as possible.

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Google's main business is advertising, search is just one of the vehicles to deliver the ads. Google wants you to see, watch and click as many ads as possible. The top search results are all ads and look very similar - more than ever - to real search results. And than you have Youtube, a gorefest of ads and unfiltered comments, with creators begging for likes and subs.

My long trail search never have ads. For only very common words they show advertise. How else they going to afford this free facility ?

Google's Youtube is incredibly pernicious. Every time you visit to watch a specific video, they bombard you with the videos that they've decided are the most likely to distract you. They even have autoplay on by default so you can get sucked in to a video you didn't decide to watch before you realize it.

Google’s main business, Search, is still about getting you away from Google as quick as possible.

It used to be. But that was a while ago. Most of the Google search results today for popular topics lead to Google properties or are ads. As I've pointed out for years, when search works right, the search engine doesn't make any money. Page and Brin made that point in the original Google paper.

I feel a little bit like, give me a break...

Google actually has some legit products which are actually the most relevant search results for some queries.

If those are the only things you see at the top you're not really looking for anything particularly interesting.

> Most of the Google search results today for popular topics lead to Google properties or are ads

This does not match my experience. Can you give some examples? "are ads" - do you mean AdWords, or websites in the search results that are actually ads?

As a single data point, I just did a Google search for [music subscription services]. First result (for me) is Wikipedia, followed by several comparisons, Spotify on 5th place, and Google Music not ranking in the top 10. Looks good to me.

It depends on the query, location, and probably bunch of other things. Right now, if I do a Google search for the word "buty" (polish for "shoes"), 8 results fit on my screen, and first 4 of them are ads (explicitly labeled as such) (also, it was 4 out of 7 before I closed the "we've revised our privacy policy" dialog).

What I see is a list of cards that take up most of the page. Each card has a logo in it. First card is Spotify, second card is Google Play. When I click on a card I get a search for that brand where the first result is an ad for that brand's website.

On the original page, the only other visible links are an ad for Amazon Music, and (mostly below-the-fold) "best music streaming services" from Consumer Reports.

Disagree. I search something and away all day long. If not would use something else as most would. Now it is true Google gives me what I need on Google but it is not done to try to make me stay or try to drive engagement like Facebook.

Google is trying to get you to come back soon while FB is stay and never leave.

Google's main business is ads, not Search, but even then Google still owns YouTube, Gmail and other things that are used by people every single day. On top of that they haven't been particularity neutral as far as politics are concerned and have even changed search for political reasons (fighting "fake news"). So yes, Google is definitely an influencer just like Facebook is.

I think this part strikes right at Google, since they are much more an infrastructure provider, not just a site you can avoid using:

<<Soros warned of an “even more alarming prospect” on the horizon if data-rich internet companies such as Facebook and Google paired their corporate surveillance systems with state-sponsored surveillance – a trend that’s already emerging in places such as the Philippines.

“This may well result in a web of totalitarian control the likes of which not even Aldous Huxley or George Orwell could have imagined,” he said.>>

It's worth noting that Soros is likely to be predisposed to seeing the "red flags" (pun intended) of oppressive government spying and despotism having experienced first-hand during his formative teen years the Nazi occupation of Hungary and the subsequent Soviet period, initially in-country and then from afar in England. It's both a valuable paranoia, but also one that's likely to be prone to overestimate the worst-case scenario and the slipperiness of the slope, so to speak.

I'm definitely concerned by the surveillance state that's developing, but I also believe that our flag is significantly less red than both the Nazi and Soviet flags, both literally and figuratively. I think it's important that we're wary of slippages in freedoms of citizens without resorting to hyperbole and comparing the current situation to oppressive regimes which murdered so many millions of their own citizens definitely feels hyperbolic.

Yeah, I don't think anyone seriously believes that any first-world country is a fascist state. The worry is, one might become such state in 10-20 years, with all the oppression infrastructure readily available to use.

You underestimated the part when he studied philosophy.

Human nature hasn't really changed in the last hundred years. My great grandfather was imprisoned as an enemy of the people and my father was tracked by the Securitate political police - it's not such a distant dystopia for me so I empathize with Soros.

The danger here is that we might be lulling ourselves in a complacent state "it can't happen to us", because of our values, democracy, political system, etc. while at the same time putting in place massive infrastructure ripe for totalitarian abuse.

At a moment's notice, the situation can transition radically with the monsters lurking in the shadows taking full control of an unstoppable surveillance machine, indeed of a capacity not even Orwell could imagine - now capable of autonomous decision and self enforcement for absolute compliance. The trigger could be something as banale as a military conflict - our capacity to chose freedom as opposed to complete physical security has steadily gotten worse. Once in place totalitarian rule is strongly self enforcing and very very hard to shake, it corrodes all social cohesion and institutions, turning individuals into survival or full denial mode.

>The danger here is that we might be lulling ourselves in a complacent state "it can't happen to us"

this is the perfect chance to plug one of my favorite books, sinclair lewis' "it can't happen here."

the content is predictable, but the implementation of the idea is fantastically detailed and-- in the wake of the US' current political situation-- outrageously predictive for being written decades ago.

> overestimate the worst-case scenario and the slipperiness of the slope

Timothy Snyder (historian of Eastern Europe) wrote a book about the conditions needed to happen to get murders in millions. It's called Bloodlands - Europe between Hitler and Stalin, and I highly recommend it, it's cured me of many misconceptions about Holocaust and WW2 (and I thought I know it pretty good, I'm interested in history and I'm Polish - WW2 is still a big subject here).

It doesn't only speak about Holocaust, it showcases several genocides that happened just before and during WW2 in eastern Europe, and states a thesis, that the only required condition is destruction of state institutions. Ideologies, cultures, stereotypes are secondary. Some of the most antisemitist states in WW2 had lots of Jews surviving German occupation (see France), some of the least antisemitic countries had almost all of their Jews killed (see Netherlands). It mostly depended on how Germans dealt with the institutions of state when they occupied particular country.

Even Germany started murdering on a really big scale only when it got access to lands with no law and no state institutions (because they destroyed them). And most of the murders took place not in death camps (which were BTW excluded from German law), but on-site, in otusands of villages and town, by German police/army/SS, or local guerilla fighters, bandits, marauders, paramilitary groups, just local people, or a mix of these.

As a personal note, I'm quite scared by everything that happens in Europe, and especially in Poland for last few years. There's nationalist renaissance going on, and some previously marginalized views become mainstream, the state anti-minority propaganda is just unbearable (basically ~all Muslims are terrorists, all leftist want to flood us with them because that'll somehow make us more like USSR and as we know it's the leftists' goal, but we have Catholic Church and government that will defend us). Somehow feminists and LGBT are in the conspiracy too. People believe in all that crap to various degrees, but it's mainstream. You are ridiculed if you don't.

Literal neonazis are still marginal (well, it's Poland, duh), but nationalism is fashionable suddenly, and even this week I've heard 2 old ladies in mall talking about the Muslims that want to kill us and the leftists that want them in so that Poland is communist again.

It's surreal, and it only took 3 years. And we barely have any minorities in the first place. How much easier it would be in a country where there are real problems with minorities?

Your point about collapse of state institutions seems to resonate with other historical genocides, like in Rwanda. OTOH, it seems to be accepted that during WW2, the "Final Solution" was pretty much state-sponsored and mechanistic. So I wonder whether there is more than one possible way people can turn into mass murderers?

Being Polish myself, I'd like to offer my own view on some of your statements, without detracting from the main point.

> all Muslims are terrorists (...) It's surreal, and it only took 3 years.

That one has been brewing for a loooong time, pretty much ever since 9/11, and we can thank Western media for that. It's a hot topic only now, because it ties into EU's immigration crisis. The immigrants involved come from Muslim countries, so people went all "oh, so you want us to welcome terrorists now?".

> Somehow feminists and LGBT are in the conspiracy too.

They kind of had it coming, though :). People are not blind to the utter craziness of the extreme fringes of feminist movements in the US (which get all the media attention); all that "social justice warriors" mess was observable through social media, and so I've noticed years ago that people locally were starting to polarize about feminism too. It's not about women rights as much the combination of viewing things through traditional (catholic) values + conflating all feminism with crazy American SJWs. But I guess, as it is today and with current governance, it all got bundled together under "anti-Polish, pro-Union-of-Socialistic-European-Republics, crazy lefties".

All in all, you make a solid point on just how quickly things can flip around. The change may be brewing for a long time, but when it happens, it's pretty swift.

> Some of the most antisemitist states in WW2 had lots of Jews surviving German occupation (see France)

I don't think that France would qualify as one of the most antisemitist state of WW 2. Since Dreyfus affair at the beginning of the XXth century, antisemitism was less and less prevalent. But I agree that having a unoccupied zone for most of the war and keeping most state institutions helped saving most of the Jews living in France before the war.

I think you have a skewed view of events and exaggerate a bit. You can't base your opinions based on things like anecdotal accounts of two old ladies in a shopping mall and then extrapolate and generalize. What's happening in Poland, and in Central/Eastern Europe (CEE) in general, is quite complex. People hate complexity. They like the nice, tidy narratives in the media that warring political factions spin around their own interests.

First of all, you might want to distinguish between patriotism and nationalism (understood as a chauvinist national cult). The two are quite different.

Second, the period of 1990-2008 is kind of a twilight zone of history. I remember how, following the fall of the Berlin wall, the end of history was an idea that excited people. Come 2008, history has returned and with force. The recession exposed the geopolitical seismic faults stretching and fracturing the world. Capital was found to have a nationality after all. CEE resides on a very particular geopolitical fault line in Europe with its own unique geopolitical, economic, and security concerns and challenges, often at odds with the interests of countries like Germany and Russia (again, historically the case). For many of us, this return of history is something quite new, many of us having spent most of our lives in that supposed post-historic twilight zone.

Third, it's in poor taste to conflate opposition to taking in migrants with bigotry. Sure, some people are bigoted or simply ignorant. They do exist. However, that's not what is driving the essential opposition to the taking in migrants. The migrant crisis has been an extraordinary cluster fuck of epic proportions. Also, consider that: the majority of migrants are not Syrians or people from war-torn regions; that the West (including the US, largely at fault for destabilizing the regimes that kept militant Islam in check; many of them countries with colonial pasts in those countries) failed to take in the numbers they could; the wealthy Saudis, with ties to the US, failed to take significant numbers in; the homogeneity of CEE countries post-WWII and the social problems of taking in migrants of radically different culture would cause for both parties; the on-the-ground support, financial and otherwise, of Poles in Syria; the ~1 million Ukrainians Poland took in from war-torn Ukraine while countries like Germany did not. I could continue. The point is that this is a complex issue and the media has been vicious in its suppression of many important facts.

Fourth, Western leftists have no qualms trying to strong arm CEE countries into accepting abortion, gay marriage, transgenderism, etc (abortion was once completely legal under communism). They have no problem (through a network of foreign-sponsored NGOs, foreign-owned media, foreign "aid" programs, etc) insinuating these views and attacking those who oppose them with the usual accusations of fascism, misogyny, bigotry, and so on. I don't want to get into a debate about these issues here. I only wish to illustrate the aggressive, paternalistic, and presumptuous attempts to foist these ideological positions onto these societies with the help of wealthy financiers (such as Soros). Don't forget: most migrants come from societies where legal inventions like gay marriage not only doesn't exist, but gay relations are punishable.

Beyond that, I wouldn't overstate the transformation you believe was orchestrated by the current government. The state media in Poland changes hands every time the gov't changes and it is a drop in the bucket compared to the world of corporate media which backs the opposition parties regardless of which gov't happens to be in power. Many voted for the current gov't out of exasperation with the previous gov't and its allies. Also, the idea that you are ridiculed for criticizing the current gov't is silly. There is a deluge of criticism of the current gov't, from media outlets to cabaret satire. You are not unique in your perspective and your perspective resides very neatly in the narrative that's been spun by the opposition, its media backers, and affiliated parties. Even some high-ranking clergy in the Church have expressed criticism. Then there's the internet. Cities tend to have more left-leaning tendencies than rural areas. I have come across critics everywhere. I simply cannot fathom what small Polish island you live on where what you hold is remotely true.

> You can't base your opinions based on things like anecdotal accounts of two old ladies in a shopping mall and then extrapolate and generalize.

That was just an example of how widespread this attitude got recently. I've spoken to many people, including my (mostly liberal till recently) family, and the sentiment is similar.

> you might want to distinguish between patriotism and nationalism

I do distinguish them, and I consider myself a "positivist patriot", as opposed to "romantic nationalist" - which is a much more common attitude in Poland.

Patriotism becomes nationalism when people start to exclude others. It's already widespread - see "Poland for Poles" on national holidays, anti-Ukrainian resentment, etc.

> often at odds with the interests of countries like Germany and Russia

historically Poland was allied with one part of Germany, and fighting the other part of it. Most of old Polish cities were settled basing on German law, often by Germanic settlers. We've had our wars, but we've had wars against all of our neighbors.

Currently Poland and Germany only benefit from the cooperation, and the differences are vastly overstated because of internal politics (PIS using anti-German sentiment to fight opposition basically).

> the ~1 million Ukrainians Poland took in from war-torn Ukraine

you know well it's bullshit. 99+% of them are economic migrants. I'm from Lublin. I have Ukrainians in my family. I've been to Kiev this year, and to Ukraine many times. Ukraine west of Dniepr is as war-torn as Poland was in 2004 (we had 2 wars going on, remember?).

> The point is that this is a complex issue

It's only issue because politicians made it one. Had we accepted a few tousand imigrants there would be no issue, just like there's no issue in most of EU countries that did just that. Including even Hungary recently :)

But it was very convenient for PIS to use imigrants as a card during last elections, so they did, fuck the consequences. So we had the campaign of xenophoby in media, and the effects are pretty bad. Poland had 2500 Indian students last year. In the whole world there's almost 500 000 of them abroad. Out of 25 violent incidents against Indian students abroad, 9 happened in Poland in last year.

Violent crimes against Muslim minority in Poland grew almost twice from 2015 to 2016.

These are still minor concerns, simply because there's so few immigrants here. But it will have to change, because of demography. And no, 500+ won't help, it's simpe math. Even if every women in child-bearing age had 1 more kid than now - because of a demographic hole from 90s - the number of kids born will drop to record low in next decade.

Ukrainians are already there, but it won't suffice.

> Western leftists have no qualms trying to strong arm CEE countries into accepting abortion, gay marriage, transgenderism, etc

If you consider these things leftist, then the remaining non-leftist countries are Poland, Russia, and Muslim republics. And with Russia I'm not so sure, it's much more libral on abortion.

It's not "western leftist", who don't want to ban abortion no matter the conditions. Over 60% of Poles want abortion to be allowed (depending on the circumstances). And it was HIGHER in 90s. The propaganda that is the most widespread is Church and conservatives, not the mythical leftists. And it's working.

> I simply cannot fathom what small Polish island you live on where what you hold is remotely true.

I'm living in Lublin, visiting my family in small village nearby, and for a few months now and then I live in Warsaw. I wouldn't call it "island", it's pretty good cross-section of a Polish society.

> most migrants come from societies where legal inventions like gay marriage not only doesn't exist, but gay relations are punishable

Yes, and? Most of them aren't religious. Most of religious Muslims aren't extremists.

It's funny how fragile self-image of western (and - in consequence - Polish) right-wing is. Our (western) culture is WINNING. Kids in Egypt and Saudi Arabia watch Real Madrid and Hollywood movies. We don't watch their movies nor their sports. They know who Lewandowski is and what Shakira wear, we don't know who their stars and celebrities are.

The assimilation is never easy, but it's inevitable. And the problems western Europe has are nothing new. "The troubles" in UK had much bigger cost in lives than all the Muslim terrorists. France and Spain had their terrorists in 80s and 90s, too.

Terrorism crisis is mostly a PR problem.

http://www.datagraver.com/thumbs/1300x1300r/2017-05/ter-we-i...

>These are still minor concerns, simply because there's so few immigrants here. But it will have to change, because of demography. And no, 500+ won't help, it's simpe math. Even if every women in child-bearing age had 1 more kid than now - because of a demographic hole from 90s - the number of kids born will drop to record low in next decade.

I am not Polish or anything close to it, but I would imagine that most Poles would have a hard time getting excited about this. "Our culture is dying, but it's OK because we can bring in some third-worlders to keep the population numbers up!" does not exactly inspire jubilance.

Thinking about these two (fertility problems and anti-immigration sentiment) juxtaposed makes me wonder if they're connected. As an American, would I be as up-in-arms as I am about illegal immigration if I felt part of a strong, successful, viable culture that was by and for me? Probably not.

One other thing: that Saudi Arabian kids know who Shakira is is not a sign that Western culture is winning---at least, not the good parts. The parts I care about are things like Christianity, the rule of law, and, candidly, people who look like me. I feel like sort of a provocateur writing this, but it would have been an entirely unremarkable statement two hundred years ago---and I suspect the Poles are channeling something like it. WTF do they care about Shakira?

>the surveillance state that's developing

you mean has been developed and deployed and actively in use for over a decade, and is continually expanding even now?

you can have oppression without murder, or even without the threat of violence... surveillance is a subtle tyrant, but don't mistake that for meaning that it is any less destructive.

Remember Google’s main business, Search, is still about getting you away from Google as quick as possible.

If Google sends you to a site with embedded adwords and analytics in what sense are you “away” from Google?

Also, there's AMP.

Also OneBox results, perhaps better-known as instant answers.

They've been around in various forms since at least as early as 2006[0]

[0] https://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/07/google-onebox-resu...

YouTube is at least 2x as bad as Facebook is in terms of indulging you in your addiction to whatever crazy conspiracy theory you want today (which is saying a lot). Facebook is perhaps better at exposing you to your neighbor's crazy conspiracy theory.

Somehow Google has managed to capture all of the profit from YouTube with none of the political/brand consequences by keeping the brand separate. It's working in the mass media and shockingly it's also somehow working in the minds of tech workers. Everyone talks about Facebook and Twitter but I rarely hear about YouTube even though I suspect they are way more influential with younger crowds.

In my experience, YouTube is a lot less spammy and attention-grabbing than facebook. It may be that my usage pattern is completely different to most users, but I almost always use YouTube by actively searching for stuff (I don't have a feed of "YouTube news", like it happens on facebook). There are no "This man wanted to surprise his wife and you'll never guess what happened" links in YouTube. I only get notifications about channels I'm subscribed to. Very occasionally -- almost never -- after watching a video I will click on suggested videos, because they are almost always relevant (besides music, I'm interested in hobby/miniatures/boardgames and the suggestions I get are almost always relevant).

Disclaimer: I use YouTube with uBlock, so I never have to see unskippable ads. In my opinion, this is the only way to use YouTube (and the only way which makes listening to playlists feasible); if this possibility ever goes away, I'll likely stop using YouTube.

edit: a sibling comment mentioned autoplay. Autoplay is indeed one of YouTube's spammy features, and I wish it went away.

With Facebook, it's almost constant spam about stuff I'm not interested in. People -- my contacts! -- share all kinds of crap. And Twitter is even worse, with lots of spam and with ads I constantly need to remind Twitter I don't want to see.

YouTube is not like FB to drive engagement is why. FB algo tries to leverage emotions to drive engagement and YT does not. There are times I actually wish YT would more instead of me having to do it.

"Target users by manipulating their attention and directing it towards their own commercial purposes." There is whole lot of other industries that do this - marketing, food packaging, adding additives like sugar, advertisement. He just described what every business does. It is ironic to hear from a billionaire who made his money investing in free market that Google and Facebook should be regulated.

The difference is that most people feel like they understand cereal, although the marketing for most cereals are directly targeting children it's just a box of cereal so nobody cares.

Most people don't understand Google or Facebook (or even the internet as a generalized service) so saying advertisements are manipulating people in regards to that pushes some beyond the threshold of comfort. It's not really the one thing that causes an issue for them, but the whole stack of other things behind it that eventually causes them to focus on a singular point that's easiest for them to complain about. Nobody wants to complain about their personal lack of knowledge, but a big bad unknown scary thing is easy to rally against.

Soros made his money by betting against people less shrew then he, not by manipulating people's minds. He's like a poker player who is opposed to modern slot machines that scream for attention and mislead about their odds of winning. Both are casino games, there's a clear ethical difference.

It's possible that Soros is blind to those other issues because they always existed for him in some shape, during his life. Internet-based addiction, internet-based anything, computer-based anything, is something he was aware of it's introduction. That is much easier to notice, when you're alive during the change, rather than living with food additives always existing. (I think this would be called the Normalcy Bias.)

I suggest instead of seeing it ironically, see it as Soros being blinded by his biases, like we all are. Given that, it would be better to say "yes, this, AND it's also similar to XYZ", rather than appearing to dismiss what I think are very accurate views (on the danger of FB/attention merchanting).

> Google’s main business, Search, is still about getting you away from Google as quick as possible

Google Analytics.

On virtually every website, tracking everybody, all the time. Google is trying to get as much data about us as they can, and if you are an ex-Googler, you are pretty blue-eyed.

Youtube? If you ever watch a kid going through one of those toy unwrapping channels its not far-fetched to think that there's something going on there that's playing on the way their brain works to keep them coming back for more.

Unboxing is the technical term :) Yes, my kids watch that crap, too. It's fiendishly addictive for them, scarily so.

Ah, yes. Thank you. :-) I am about to have my first so I expect there is a whole new world of YouTube-related lingo to learn!

> getting you away from Google as quick as possible.

Pretty sure virtually every website on the internet is talking to Google one way or another. So it doesn't really matter whether you're on Google or not, does it?

This also applies to Facebook with the ubiquity of the Facebook login SDK and tracking.

I deleted my FB cookies on my main browser and only ever login to FB on a different browser to try to minimize this. Although, I guess I could have done incognito mode.

Your friends, colleagues, and family likely have you in their contact lists, so Facebook knows you are missing from its graph. In lieu of an active profile they maintain a shadow profile for (at least) your phone number, and whatever additional information people who know you have unwittingly provided to Facebook and its daughters (e.g., WhatsApp).

Facebook knows us by our social connections. We don't have to actually use it for that. As long as your browser's privacy add-ons disable Facebook's widgets (the like-button) it probably can't track your browsing habits though.

Hm, there's the cesspool that is YouTube. And even with search, there's data collection and tracking. Does anyone on the internet ever really escape Google?

Facebook is definitely more in the straight up designed addiction game, but Google isn't far away in my mind.

Google's main business is advertising, through Search. To do this, they have to keep you coming back to Google and at the same time know everything about you to give you the most relevant ads. This is done by tailoring the search results to you, which is usually good, but can still create a "bubble" because I'll usually end up seeing articles that agree with my points of view without intending to do so.

>Remember Google’s main business, Search, is still about getting you away from Google as quick as possible.

Uuuuum...off the top of my head with no investigation at all:

If I search for anything that could plausibly involve a video, I get a string of youtube links at the top of my google search.

Google favors AMP links over sending me to the actual website.

I'm sure I could come up with more, given half a second. Ever been directed to bing maps from google, for example?

> Remember Google’s main business, Search, is still about getting you away from Google as quick as possible.

As a googler, you don't even know that your own company provides analytic tools for websites, as well as personalized integrated search for websites? ads on third party websites? webmaster tools? script cdn? font hosting? AMP cache ? ...

getting out of "google.com" doesn't mean that the user stops being tracked by google.

> Remember Google’s main business, Search, is still about getting you away from Google as quick as possible.

Away to a place that will show more Google ads.

>> Remember Google’s main business, Search, is still about getting you away from Google as quick as possible.

That's one perspective. Another is that it's about taking you were google wants as quickly as possible.

facebook's addiction is that most people love to be heard and seen. they want to be center of attention. I cannot fault facebook for enabling that. If anything it may have brought more people into association with others than any previous internet platform.

for me what Soros and many politicians have in common is they see two very powerful people enabling systems they don't hold sway over. Soros and his type with their money don't have it and politicians cannot control the message.

so both groups throw their wealth, influence, and power, behind efforts to convince people that entities like google and facebook are a threat to the people where they really are a threat to the old power brokers that are loathe to give them up.

it wasn't too long ago they controlled the message, either directly or through sycophants in the media. the internet through companies like google and facebook ended that control and hence constitute a threat

It's not that people don't want be be seen and heard, but that socials encourage the desire to be seen and heard. It the past, fame wasn't a priority.

I’d say google control information way more than facebook. For serious stuff, work or study you usually go to google. There is little recourse for content if it doesn’t display there.

Youtube?

It's half true now. Google used to help you find your way on the web, but now it's your world third eye. There's not really information outside google anymore. It will parse it, synthesize it in cards, connect it to local areas, pop up videos about it, etc etc.

Search "getting you away" from Google? Have you seen the result pages for many "juicy" queries? It's almost entirely Google properties and ads ATF.

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