[manachar]

I've started hearing from non-tech people complaining about the spammy results in google results.

Feels like "trust" that they're actually seeing the best results are going down.

That said, many of these same people rarely actually google things outside of simple factual information that Google does okay at (e.g. height of the eiffel tower). Their experience of the internet is mostly through various social media filters (e.g. Facebook, TikTok, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, etc.)

I also suspect this is part of the reason Google is giving worse results. Most of the actual content being generated on the internet is now occurring in various walled gardens that either pollute search results (Pinterest!) or don't show up (Facebook).

It's a tough problem for a company built on the open web that web mostly resembles a late-game Risk map with just a few big players.

[foobarian]

Sounds like the internet has interpreted the parasitic value exploitation as damage and routed around it. By cutting off its nose.