Not surprising. Many government agencies have become just means of collecting money from the population. For example, I knew someone who was jailed several years ago. They told him he was facing up to 2 years if he didn't pay a fine. He didn't have the money, so he stayed in jail. After 6 weeks they let him go without explanation. My suspicion is that they realized he really had no money to give them. Since they were paying to house and feed him, they decided he was a financial drain, not a source, and that's why they let him go. Another example is that in Arizona, when a father pays child support, the money doesn't go to his children. The money goes into a pool, and the state apportions it among all the children in the state who are in the system. Fathers' child support has become just another revenue source for Arizona!

There may be two reasons for this. First, many people now use Google as a dictionary and spelling guide. Second, Google accepts payments from websites for keywords. So, effectively, many search results are giving us advertisements, rather than useful information.

Schemes companies use to prevent us from modifying devices we own are unethical. They no longer own our devices, we do. We need laws that protect us from manufacturers who insist on retaining ownership of devices that they do not own.