'Don't be evil' as a company motto really seemed to make Google different in the early days - not just in terms of being hip and cool in contrast to their contemporary competitors, but in terms of recognizing that technology has a moral dimension and that the firm's long-term wellbeing lay not just in maximizing its technological power but distributing the benefits thereof as widely as possible, rather than conserving it for private advantage.

I find their news product a useful barometer of the extent to which they've abandoned that. Last Monday I sat down at my workstation and the top item - amid war, political instability, and everything else going on in the world - were articles about the Google Pixel 4. I know this wasn't a reflection of my browsing habits - I'm just not interested in phone technology at the product level, and and any online shopping/product research that I do these days happens on a separate account on a separate device, because I don't want to mix up my consumer preferences with my intellectual interests.

You would think that with all Google's brainpower the presentation and distribution of news would by now have seen massive advances, but instead it has simply magnified the worst aspect of print and Tv news. I'm beset with sports, entertainment, 'health' (mostly quackery), and 'technology (mostly consumer products) news every day, even though I used to be able to opt out of those things. If I make the mistake of looking at a sports article on my workstation or phone, I am swamped with sports articles for the next day or two, presumably because the sports market is so lucrative and Google's algorithms get tremendously excited at the possibility that I am adopting the consumer the consumer profile of a sports fan.

Likewise I am constantly being advanced second- and third-hand sources of news based on SEO and existing reach; every other story I read is a half-assed rewrite of original research done by a news outlet with a smaller brand footprint. If I'm lucky I can see that in the first paragraph or two and can click through to the original, if not it's because a big news outlet is just stealing or redoing stories without credit or attribution and I may find out about it later when I read Twitter.

I could rant on and on and on about Google's news product and about their other products and practices, but all my critiques of the firm boil down to this: google has become a company that takes bids (including from itself) on the order in which it provides leaves to consumers, while denying them sight of the trees they are plucked from.