[digi_owl]

What seems to have happened was that Google shifted focus from sorting the web to delivering the "zeitgeist" of the present.

Perhaps because more people were likely to search for whatever was on the news cycle than some arbitrary piece of info.

Never mind that Google's earnings comes from ads, not search results.

[ghaff]

Google's original mission statement from 1998 was to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Things like Usenet archives are clearly part of that.

That is still apparently their mission statement but I agree the reality seems more along the lines of "deliver the best search results for users' immediate needs" [while making as much money from that as humanly possible]

[macspoofing]

It's sad. The original mission implied nothing was going to get lost and abandoned. So much for that.