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This reeks of victim blaming. We should be able to go about our lives and not get scammed trying to order food from the local Thai food place.

Yes agree with that which is exactly what the second half of my post is about. Google should not be advertising competitors when you directly search for someone. If you search for Thai restaurant then yes. But not for a specific business. And only legitimate verified businesses which are not fronts for this behaviour.

But really, is the famous Doctorow not using an ad blocker in 2023?

Doctorow is blaming Google here - and they are selling the unconstrained advertising service.

> I expected better from the author.

better than an essay explaining the scam and digging into root causes? For the benefit of less sophisticated people.

But yeah, a journalist interested in this specific topic could have run an adblock instead.