[thesquib]

I have to agree. Lately (maybe year or so) it seems that researching anything that isn't clearly linked to some kind of product or service is difficult on Google.

It occurs to me that it could partly be that the "free and open" internet seems to be dying. For example, Discord or Slack are often used to replace message boards but that means they are no longer indexed and searchable. There are many examples like this right?

The old free hosted sites are dying off or provide no monetary value to Google. So even if they still exist, why bother indexing them.

This has nothing to back it up of course, just musings.