[WarOnPrivacy]

I can't get behind the article's conclusions.

1) Google’s results are really good. Not quite. Google's results used to be really good but now are a mix of helpful to some, less helpful and fully counterproductive.

2) and they’re really good because they have a monopoly on the user data. User data may elevate some products but the worth of search results stems from the crawled index and search algorithms.

2a) every engineer could leave and a start a new search engine with the exact same source code and that search engine would be worse. Only until their crawlers built a sufficient index. If they can filter out results gamed for Google SEO, they'll be better.

3) In a landmark case, a US judge has ruled that Google’s monopoly on search is unlawful. Trim the first 3 letters of the last word and this conclusion will be sound.