re: #115 BishopX

What google et all are doing is further increasing the space between what’s actually on the internet and what’s actually searchable on the internet.

Google is not the internet and it’s not the only way to search for what is on the internet. This kind of conflation is patently ridiculous, and you keep repeating variants of this claim in the face of multiple people who’ve corrected the error. While claiming to understand that Google is a private company you again and again voice expectations that they should operate like a public utility agency lest the abstract “internet” suffer irreparable damage.

Every time that happens it weakens what the internet was built for, the free exchange of information.

It doesn’t weaken anything because Google isn’t the internet. It isn’t even a necessary part of the internet, and the internet wasn’t built to feed your insatiable desire for access to everything imaginable. It’s always had constraints, in the beginning most notably on commercial uses. Yes it was built to exchange information, but not without any restrictions, it’s always had gateways. The institutional servers connected to it have always guarded certain levels of access.

The idea of freedom that’s evolved around the internet has always been more of a religious article of faith than actual reality. Information doesn’t want to be free, it doesn’t want anything.