Today in Never Again Trust Anything Google Tells You

Google's 'experiment' hiding Australian news just shows its inordinate power

Australians have been seeing current news disappearing in recent days, replaced by old links and old news: in some cases news outlets have disappeared altogether. Google says it is displaying older or less relevant content to 1% of users.

The news comes as the debate between Australian media and “Big Tech” revs up over the proposed news media bargaining code, which would require Google to negotiate a fair price for news content with eligible Australian outlets.

Google doesn’t want to pay for news content, on anyone’s terms except its own, and it appears to be manipulating search results to avoid it.

In other words, they killed search results for Australian news media for a day in retaliation over a price bargaining law.

I saw this article right after replying to this thread where haskal was pointing out how Android would nag you about supposedly battery-draining notifications without regard to any demonstrable difference in battery use, relying instead on the software's reliance on Google for its notifications. My response was a related experience where Android would remind me that I was running out of storage and recommend I delete some programs that I supposedly wasn't using much - and they turned out all to be non-Google things I was using on a regular basis for which Google had their own apps.

So, to recap:

1. You can't trust Google's OS to tell you what you need.


2. You can't trust Google's search to give you what you're looking for.

That's pretty much the core of their flagship products.

At this point I'm only stuck with it for:

1. Email and calendar by organizations I work for or with.


2. A lazy way to move text between my computer and my phone. (copypaste the text into a calendar reminder)


3. Pokémon Go.

#1 and #3 are not mine to abandon, but if anyone's got a good alternative for #2 that doesn't involve carrying a USB cord everywhere I'd like to know.