Google Hates You

However, based on my general observation, a company's primary purpose is often the self-actualization of its owner. People usually cite monetization as a corporate goal, but since owners rarely hate money, the two usually go hand in hand. In reality, though, an owner's self-actualization takes precedence even in the face of clear financial losses. From that perspective, the employees hired by the company also bear a certain degree of responsibility.

Of course, I don't think that is inherently bad. You can't just divide everything into a moral dichotomy of good and evil; it's a deeply intertwined issue of desire, greed, and self-actualization (such as doing the exact research one aims for through massive corporate R&D investments).

Your point is valid, but it relies on extreme reductionism. For example, I might think a particular nation's system is flawed. A country has its merits, yet we still "hate" specific countries. But when you think about it, a nation is just a system too, isn't it?

Ultimately, we just speak selectively based on these cognitive frameworks. You could argue that Google's employees are entirely blameless, or you could argue they are serving an evil system. It’s merely a difference in perspective.

What is absolutely certain, however, is that Google's current form of business has completely upended the existing economic structure. Whether this is a net positive or negative remains to be seen. In the future, Google might pivot its business model to pay high-quality creators directly, but the real issue is that this new system leaves everyone highly susceptible to being subjugated by Google.

Realistically, we cannot predict everything in such a complex future, nor can we say this is definitively bad. Google users have a desire to find answers more easily, while content creators have a desire to make a living off their work. Striking that compromise is exactly what makes this so difficult.

Oh, no doubt. But it's a lot, lot less fun, eh?

Still, I'll push back on the vague sense of jargon-esque doublespeak: Google's management frequently make decisions that do work against the best interests and the desires of its users.

Before if I asked a question, the top 3 results would be StackOverflow. I'd click into the first one and find out that the question was subtly different than mine making its answer useless, but it included a lot of similar words. Go back and click into the second one. It's exactly my problem, asked three years ago, no answer. Go back and click into the third one. Same question, but it's been answered. Great. But the accepted answer has a score of -3 and another answer has a score of 5. So which one do I follow? Whoops, it's actually neither of them, because the library has broken both of those workflows.

Now I get my answer right away 90% of the time. And if I don't then I scroll down and I'm not worse off than I was 2 years ago.