I could be mistaken, but I think that if you go back far enough with the wayback machine's Web archive, you can probably find Google advertising it was never going to give you ads. (I'd have to check to be sure, of course). Now, it harvests your data and shows you targeted ads.

I stopped using it (and a number of other "free" services) at the point where I found out that much. So much for "don't be evil", eh? Google is sort of your worst nightmare these days (or maybe these nights, for that matter) ...

The algorithm it uses is still better than the competition at some things, such as showing the opening hours of a store nearby. You can just enter the name in Google and it'll tell you if it's open or when it will be. Presearch will just show you info on the company (but you can always refine your search, which potentially means getting more PRE). However, if you really want completely unfiltered results, Qwant is currently your best bet. Even if you directly search for them, it's almost impossible to find crypto scam sites on Google, yet Qwant still gives them first with a direct search. (It's not that you'd necessarily want to visit those sites, but it does show that Google doesn't show you the things for which you look, but rather what it thinks you want. It's way too often wrong at doing that.)

Google and friends Rickrolled us all. Nobody saw that coming (at least most of us didn't) and then, boom, the Internet got crazily scary (in a dystopian dictatorship way), gate-kept by just a handful of big tech companies. That wasn't supposed to happen; that wasn't the spirit of how it started or was meant to continue. A decentralised Web 3.0, where big tech companies no longer have the lion's share, might be a way to take back the 'Net. I certainly hope so.

Post thumbnail: Photo by Oleksandr Pidvalnyi on Pexels