>The only difference between the Web of old and the modern Web is that the wild Web sometimes is harder do find due to the instrumentality of the Google search engine, for good and bad.

For a brief period of time, every human with an internet connection had access to a significant portion of the sum total of previously-preserved human knowledge. Web 2.5 has pushed us backwards. After several years now of being unable to easily find relevant results using Google, DDG, etc., I had the crushing realization that, near 30 and for the first time in my life, less truly useful information was available to me, to the average person, than had been before.

This should scare people. Powers that are obfuscating both their rationale and the mechanics of their means are making a play for our collective knowledge base.