appachai2

Yeah, most startups aren't geared towards their employees. They have to grow a certain size before the employees are able to get reasonable terms from their employer.

At least for me Google search is quite helpful. I get into new hobbies every once in a while, travel to new third-world countries. There doesn't exist one or ten places to get this info. I also couldn't imagine living without Google as a college student when the internet was way way younger and immature.

DuckDuckGo isn't public right? So, this question doesn't apply to them.

That's the 90s. I don't think people were happy with that. I wasn't on internet then, so not 100% sure. In general, I see money as a representative of how effective certain company/technology/etc. is and there were no multi billion dollar companies in 90s (though the internet was young at that point).

I am pretty sure there are tons of things Google/Facebook/Amazon/etc. can improve but not having any data about user isn't definitely one of those approaches.

Best of luck paying 1 cent for every search result you do.

And ofcourse you don't even realize but ads is one of the best ways for underprivileged to get on to internet.