Originally Posted by deltav

Sure, I think the complaint though is that they've really diverged sharply in the past year or two from providing a relatively objective & useful service via their search engine, to one that now points consumers towards their many properties at the expense of the SE's quality. The change has been really noticeable. And it's just going to get worse because such a huge chunk of the public is conditioned to use Google's "free" services without thinking about what's going on behind the scenes.

It's also kinda a drag because of what it symbolizes. For years the internet was a relatively democratic place where things were equalized compared to brick & mortar - the little guy had a much better chance of eking out a spot. Now we're seeing more and more big corporate entities collaborating and crowding out the small competition.

You can see that in adult pretty blatantly - used to be tons of indie paysites and a huge population of affiliates. Now both have dwindled and it's mostly tubes and large programs out there. Prolly the end of an era for the internet, and I don't think for the better...