Google rewrites the queries you search for.
Last year, wired.com wrote an article which exposes how Google alters search queries to ones that monetize better (for them).
But it's important to note that Google also ideologically alters search queries.
For example, if you search for "white man and white woman" and click on "images", you won't see a single photo of a white man and a white woman.
https://m.primal.net/HkfZ.png
In other words, what you searched for is NOT what you get.
After Wired wrote the article, Google told them to take it down.
Initially Wired refused to take the article down, but then they caved.
If you go to the URL of the article, you will now see an "Editorial note": https://www.wired.com/story/google-antitrust-lawsuit-search-results/
However, you can use the way-back machine to still access the article: https://web.archive.org/web/20231002162713/https://www.wired.com/story/google-antitrust-lawsuit-search-results/
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Here is the complete text of the article for reference:
How Google Alters Search Queries to Get at Your Wallet
RECENTLY, A STARTLING piece of information came to light in the ongoing antitrust case against Google. During one employee’s testimony, a key exhibit momentarily flashed on a projector. In the mostly closed trial, spectators like myself have only a few seconds to scribble down the contents of exhibits shown during public questioning. Thus far, witnesses had dropped breadcrumbs hinting at the extent of Google’s drive to boost profits: a highly confidential effort called Project Mercury, urgent missives to “shake the sofa cushions” to generate more advertising revenue on the search engine results page (SERP), distressed emails about the sustained decline in the ad-triggering searches that generate most of Google’s money, recollections of how the executive team has long insisted that obscene corporate profit equals consumer good. Now, the projector screen showed an internal Google slide about changes to its search algorithm.
I was attending the trial out of long-standing professional interest. I had previously battled Google’s legal team while at the Federal Trade Commission, and I advocated around the world for search engine competition as an executive for DuckDuckGo. I’m all too familiar with Google’s secret games and word play. With the trial practically in my backyard, I couldn’t stay away from the drama.
This onscreen Google slide had to do with a “semantic matching” overhaul to its SERP algorithm. When you enter a query, you might expect a search engine to incorporate synonyms into the algorithm as well as text phrase pairings in natural language processing. But this overhaul went further, actually altering queries to generate more commercial results.
There have long been suspicions that the search giant manipulates ad prices, and now it’s clear that Google treats consumers with the same disdain. The “10 blue links,” or organic results, which Google has always claimed to be sacrosanct, are just another vector for Google greediness, camouflaged in the company’s kindergarten colors.
Google likely alters queries billions of times a day in trillions of different variations. Here’s how it works. Say you search for “children’s clothing.” Google converts it, without your knowledge, to a search for “NIKOLAI-brand kidswear,” making a behind-the-scenes substitution of your actual query with a different query that just happens to generate more money for the company, and will generate results you weren’t searching for at all. It’s not possible for you to opt out of the substitution. If you don’t get the results you want, and you try to refine your query, you are wasting your time. This is a twisted shopping mall you can’t escape.
Why would Google want to do this? First, the generated results to the latter query are more likely to be shopping-oriented, triggering your subsequent behavior much like the candy display at a grocery store’s checkout. Second, that latter query will automatically generate the keyword ads placed on the search engine results page by stores like TJ Maxx, which pay Google every time you click on them. In short, it's a guaranteed way to line Google’s pockets.
It’s also a guaranteed way to harm everyone except Google. This system reduces search engine quality for users and drives up advertiser expenses. Google can get away with it because these manipulations are imperceptible to the user and advertiser, and the company has effectively captured more than 90 percent market share.
It’s unclear how often, or for how long, Google has been doing this, but the machination is clever and ambitious. I have spent decades looking for examples of Google putting its enormous thumb on the scale to censor or amplify certain results, and it hadn’t even occurred to me that Google just flat out deletes queries and replaces them with ones that monetize better. Most scams follow an elementary bait-and-switch technique, where the scoundrel lures you in with attractive bait and then, at the right time, switches to a different option. But Google “innovated” by reversing the scam, first switching your query, then letting you believe you were getting the best search engine results. This is a magic trick that Google could only pull off after monopolizing the search engine market, giving consumers the false impression that it is incomparably great, only because you’ve grown so accustomed to it.
Even if Google prevails in this antitrust trial, I predict its troubles will continue. A company executive at the trial spoke on the stand about Google’s “contract with the users” and its “honest results policy.” No matter what pretzel shape Google twists, no matter what loopholes and legalese it bandies about, defying reasonable user expectations is a loser’s game. Until then, Google’s massive market share and deep entrenchment in everyday life ensure that these warped results pollute our ability to discover and learn basic information about the world around us. The next time you Google, remember that you’re getting search results that have been skewed—not to help you find what you’re looking for, but to boost the company's profits.
Place your bets on whether Coinbase will go down today if #Bitcoin starts pumping during US hours.
They might be doing this to push more and more people toward the ETFs as the US government is clearly unhappy with people taking self custody.
https://m.primal.net/HjkW.png
They always happen when #Bitcoin is pumping.
It's very important to explain to them that buying #Bitcoin for any time period of less than 4 years is highly speculative.
#Bitcoin is an investment, not a trade.
The only people who get rekt are the ones who trade #Bitcoin and use leverage.
If you buy with the intention to hold for 4 years +, there's no better asset IMO.
According to Michael Howell, liquidity will likely have to triple in the next 10 years because 70 trillion dollars of debt has to be rolled over each year.
In USD terms #Bitcoin is going to the moon.
I wonder when long-term bond holders will realize that not a single country can pay rates > inflation for a sustained period of time. Not even the US.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPXiuOmICy0
If following the money enables you to explain 99% of the fuckery in politics, then it's clear that broken money has lead to broken incentives.
Only #Bitcoin can fix this.
https://m.primal.net/HjYk.png
The BTFP (Buy the fucking print) program is about to expire but make no mistake about it, the print will continue.
Protect yourselves with #Bitcoin.
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I can remember the exact moment I understood #Bitcoin.
The next 3 days until I open a Kraken account and transfer funds from my bank felt like an eternity.
Now I sleep like a baby, without fearing debasement.
The fiat print now pumps my bags instead of stealing from me.
https://m.primal.net/HjGI.png
This guy got rugged by and promoted all kinds of shitcoins in the last bull.
He seems to be the definition of right place, right time.
However, it is never too late to join the winning team, so kudos to him. Maybe he can convert his billionaire friends as well.
Glenn Greenwald is the smartest, most objective journalist we currently have.
However, he seems to not understand that the reason everything is broken is because the money is broken.
If you can zoom out and look at the incentives in the current system, you can explain 99% of politics.
Only #Bitcoin can fix this.
https://m.primal.net/HjFM.png
The Federal Reserve promises to steal 2% of your purchasing power each year.
Even in years in which inflation is 2%, they steal much more of your purchasing power.
This is because the natural state of markets is deflation.
As entrepreneurs innovate, automate and optimize processes, prices fall to the marginal cost of production.
The only solution is #Bitcoin.
h/t @Jeff Boothhttps://m.primal.net/HjDR.png
The last few months have been getting worse and worse.
They (Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, Facebook, Google) keep banning opposing to the regime views.
Meanwhile I'm pretty sure the government is running bot farms on Reddit (and other media platforms) that are amplifying their views.
In the past 90 days:
1. I got banned from Twitter (about 90 days ago).
2. I got banned from Reddit (today).
3. My programming blog got semi-deindexed from Google (yesterday).
I haven't done anything wrong - no threats, racism or anything like that.
The Twitter and Reddit bans were automatic. Got caught up in a filter a millisecond after posting.
I think I'll be using only nostr from now on.
It seems like the only asset you can truly own is #Bitcoin and the only platform you can own your profile on is nostr.
Also, F for my programming blog on which I've written 3,000 articles that just got murdered by Google for no reason.
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I think the US government is pumping the Ethereum price to misdirect from #Bitcoin.
I personally know no one who owns Ethereum... just saying.
The same thing happened when the US government tapped Elon Musk on the shoulder and told him t misdirect from #Bitcoin with Dogecoin or else his government subsidies disappear.
He was like: "Haha, Dogecoin, you so funny. Same as #Bitcoin."
My hope is that these people who are buying Eth know that is has been castrated and captured via proof of stake (aka proof of state).
https://m.primal.net/Heaz.png
The AI has finally graduated to #Bitcoin watermelon.
It's important to note:
1. You can never have enough #Bitcoin watermelon.
2. There is no second best watermelon.
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I love these DW documentary titles:
"Does #Bitcoin make you rich?"
Suggestions for new DW documentary titles:
1. Does fiat make you poor?
2. Does watching DW make you retarded?
The answer to all of these is - yes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFxx87yVpMA
Global debt is 400% of global GDP.
The financial system is leveraged to the gills and will inevitably fail.
The only way to exit this failing system is to opt into #Bitcoin.
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IPOs (Initial Public offerings) and ICOs (Initial Coin offerings) are a way to dump on retail in TradFi.
#Bitcoin fixes this.
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Buying #Bitcoin with the intention to sell within a year or two = Speculation.
Buying #Bitcoin with the intention to hold for at least 4 years = Investment.
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If you spend a million dollars an hour, it will take you 114 years to spend a trillion dollars.
The current US debt (excluding entitlements) is more than $34T.
#Bitcoin is your only protection.
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The genesis (first) block of the #Bitcoin blockchain contains a message: "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks"
This is a headline from the London Times following the 2007-08 financial crisis.
The genesis block is believed to have been mined on January 3rd, 2009 (as indicated in the message) or shortly after.
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