Google search has been changed to give overwhelming precedence to search results that somehow have a special preference from Google. In one case, only 7% of the screen was used to display anything else. In another case, one had to scroll down four screens to find anything else.

I think that my occasional searches will be less vulnerable to this problem that most people are. I rarely search for a product or service in the first place. I search for other sorts of things that are less business-oriented.

It seems silly to use a search engine to search for "Italian restaurant" — that is not the way to find a good Italian restaurant. I would not make the decision to "eat in an Italian restaurant" in the absence of knowing about a specific good Italian restaurant that is feasible to eat in. If there isn't one, I'd rather eat in a good restaurant of some other kind.

However, this doesn't make the article's issue unimportant. A biased search engine is no substitute for an unbiased one.