> I find that more and more often I think of something, then search on the internet, and if I see that someone somewhere has done anything similar, I abandon the project immediately. After all, it's been done, so what's the point?

Or you learn how much progress has been made on the subject you're researching and, standing on the shoulders of giants, make new independent discoveries based on what has already been found.

It's not the Internet's fault if most people don't have the right mindset for research.