[notjulianjaynes]

> Now that they are dominating the entire search market, they are skewing results to anyone who pays for promotion with them under the table, and it's not clearly apparent to users.

Slightly off topic, but as an example of this, I did a search for the manufacturer part number of a brushed DC motor the other day. It was just a randomish string of characters like S-5672 or something, and under image results and all the results were completely unrelated pictures of an entirely different brushless motor that I had recently purchased. The seeming effect of this is that Google knew I was looking for a specific product, and chose to show me a competing product instead, despite them not being comparable.

[Melatonic]

I have found their search to be less and less useful for things like this when it used to be great. Even searching in quotes has gotten much less "exact". If you really want to do an exact search you have to quote it AND now also check a box for "exact results" in the little search options dropdown.

[kevin_thibedeau]

The lesson is don't use Google search in a browser where you have their login cookies. Set up an extension that wipes their cookies when a tab is closed. Restrict logged in Google activity to a separate browser or profile that won't be used to build a behavioral profile.