"Once that happened, the altruistic, creative, and generous nature of the web was destroyed." I definitely agree I miss browsing google where not one site was striaght up trash Every site back then had some value. Now....it's the reverse and there's little value till you dig and dig. And you have to dig and dig all the time Google search is all but useless
Ya know, now that I think of it, Google just multiplied the problem. Prior to Google, all of the lists of web sites were curated by people. Bookmark lists. Yahoo. People would find a site, and add it to the list in the proper section/category, like putting away VHS tapes in a video rental store. "Ah. This site is for fans of the Dallas Cowboys. I'll file it under Sports > Football > Teams > Dallas Cowboys > Fans" Once these lists were programmatically generated by Google, you could then influence where you appeared on the list, by showing more traffic, or more keywords, or other stunts. It was no longer a person looking at a page, thinking "Yeah, this is good. I'll link to it." It became Google saying, "This word exists on this page, and more sites link to this page than that page, so this page will show up at the top of the list." As with most things, software only made the internet worse! :-)