Comment by Nextgrid
15 hours ago
All these companies have the exact same business model as Google (advertising) and have the same mismatched incentives: good search results are not something they want.
Google Search sucks not because Google is incapable of filtering out spam and SEO slop (though they very much love that people believe they can't), but that spam/slop makes the ads on the SERP page more enticing, and some of the spam itself includes Google Ads/analytics and benefits them there too.
There is no incentive for these companies to build a good search engine by themselves to begin with, let alone provide data to allow others to build one.
I was on the Goog forums for years (before they even fucking ruined the FORMAT of the forums, possibly to 'be more mobile friendly') and it was people absolutely (justifiably) screaming at the product people
No, the customer isn't 'always' right, but these guys like to get big and once big, fuck you, we don't have to listen to you, we're big; what are you going to do, leave?