The answer is essential greed, aka corporate fiduciary responsibly to increase shareholder profit.
Gomes reportedly sparred with Google over its decision to set its metrics on the total number of user queries. The former head of search reportedly balked at this metric because an improved search functionality should ideally prioritize answering users’ questions with as few clicks as possible. Google, the DOJ argued, benefits from users taking longer to search because the company can run ads against each of those queries. Around 80% of Google revenues reportedly come from advertising. If a user needs to refine their search a few times to get what they’re looking for, or if they have to scroll deeper through the results, more ads can be served to them.
Innovation can be driven by capitalism and seeking a more efficient product, but here we see where capitalism can stifle it as well. Lack of competition and regulatory capture disincentivizes innovation.
I was looking for a foot rest for my outdoor hanging chair this past weekend. So I searched for "hanging chair foot rest". Apparently, there are really popular products out there that are foot rests that hang under your desk, or on an airplane seat, and it clogged up the results. It isn't what I wanted, but it was all I got.
So I searched for "hanging chair foot rest -desk -airplane". And I found that modifiers don't fucking work for Google shopping. They have disabled operators completely. I'm trying to find what I want using methods that used to work fine, and you're saying "no... what you want is this thing you told us you didn't want."