[nanidin]

It seems to be a perennial problem, as I was looking back through old tweets and saw that in 2010 I was complaining about the same thing.

In my search results today, they're doing a good job of putting wikipedia style facts onto my screen, while simultaneously pushing wikipedia results further away from the top. I'm usually shown lots of "news" related results - maybe some kind of optimization for temporal relevance?

It's hard to know how to respond to a request for something like "octopus hat". As myself, I know I would prefer to see results from Etsy over Amazon for this particular query today. As an outsider, I don't know how anyone would know that without being around me for some time, and knowing the exact mood/mindset I'm in at that moment. In comes all of the data collection to make this algorithmically/heuristically possible. It's a bit concerning that everything coming up at the top of the results for this query are trying to sell me something - making, thinking & doing are falling way further down the page.

It makes me curious what a naked search experience would be like these days, without the personalized bubble. I try it from time to time via DuckDuckGo, and when deeply curious I suspect I'll try to navigate Google through tor.