I wish there would be a similar reaction to Google "skewing" searches in general towards what seems to be the most popular and highly-SEO'd, but also not very useful nor informative sites. When searching for more obscure things I sometimes have to go beyond 3-4 pages to find the good content, repeat with small variations of the query, etc. I often even go to the "last" page of results, without finding anything (and think to myself, "this is the Internet, where all of human knowledge is supposed to be; and yet, why can't I find anything about X?") I also seem to trigger the "you may be a bot" CAPTCHA more frequently than before.

Of course, that's unlikely to happen because there's no money in it...

IMHO the usefulness of Google as a search engine has decreased rather noticeably within the past few years. It's become less precise, less thorough (they've always been inflating the result count, but recently it seems worse), and nearly hostile to those "advanced seekers" who know exactly what they're looking for. I still remember, many years ago, discovering new and interesting "corners" of the Internet with Google. If Fravia were still alive, he may have something similar to say.

To a huge majority of the Internet-using population, Google is the Internet. It holds a huge amount of power in controlling the information people can find, and that's absolutely scary. It's something that governments have always wanted.