I would argue that bad behavior (“bad” = existing more to get ad revenue than to deliver valuable information to users) made this a viable business model for Google. I don’t love snippets, and sometimes they’re hilariously wrong, but I’d rather get wrong info from a snippet vs having a site waste my time and beg me to sign up, blocking the info from view, forcing me to “open in app”, only to find that it was bad info anyway…

Do companies exist to make things that are valuable for users, or do users exist to make money for companies?

If the information is valuable, why aren't we paying for it? That's the problem we still haven't solved. It's why you are Google's product, and it's why companies use that "sticky" behaviour. You need to be a user, a member, a customer - that way you might eventually give them a few dollars instead of glean a little information and forget they ever existed.

I really don't know what a good customer-centric endgame looks like. Maybe a self hosted AI assistant that knows what I need, coupled with a micropayment infrastructure to apportion funds based on where I visit? No idea.

> If the information is valuable, why aren't we paying for it?

Several reasons:

1. You often can't judge the value of the information before purchase.

2. The downside of having to decide whether or not to purchase is often larger than the value of the information.

3. Microtransaction costs (time and otherwise) are higher than the value of the information.

4. That information is often available for free somewhere else (sometimes people just want attention or to inform others rather than money). The top results are just the ones that spent the most money on SEO (and hence have the most intrusive ads).

Many focus on "content" that is more than one paragraph.

Ugh like recipes. With the damn recipe 10 pages down. I don’t care about your grandma’s life story. I just want to know how much flour to eggs ratio for pasta dough.

Incredibly annoying.

Perhaps you wouldn't have found that recipe in Google if they didn't include all that bullshit. Are you frustrated because you rarely get shown links in Google that are just the recipe, no fluff? Maybe they exist but you never get to see them.

They're playing by rules they didn't invent. The belief is this content gets indexed better than just recipes (which, when well written, are terse) and it should be placed above the recipe so it has higher priority. They might be mistaken but with the limited amount of information Google gives, and the fact that most places I stumble across on Google are doing it, I'm ready to believe it works.

I dislike the content-spamming recipes for another reason -- they're an accessibility nightmare. I seem to get eye strain more easily than most, despite having normal vision when my eyes aren't hurting, so I use the screen reader a lot.

Any of those recipe sites? they'll read through several minutes of navigations, links, ads, and story before getting to the site. I feel badly for anyone who must listen to that, i.e. who doesn't have an option to read it visually, what a horrible experience.

Many queries are relatively simple questions, and you won't get placement if you don't answer that question. And if you do, they have no need to click through. People care more about the answer than the justification. I've done it myself plenty of times.