@samir
Very interesting take. I think early in they were awesome- projects like digitizing books I feel were awesome acts in protecting the hearthfire of humanity's knowledge. You can tell in the long run shareholders have pushed them for quarterly profits.

But the issues with what has been done to search, don't you think that any search engine would have resulted in the same emergent behavior? I still remember a web with AOL Keywords. It was much harder to find things.

Never thought about the things you posted in this way- again, very interesting thought.