Google came out of Stanford--there was a lot of academic involvement in search engine research, competitions, and so on at the time. I went to some of the conf

Google came out of Stanford--there was a lot of academic involvement in search engine research, competitions, and so on at the time. I went to some of the conferences where it all took place. I was startled by how quickly Google rose, though. I hear you about the "Orwellian" part--this isn't the Internet that I imagined, the one with RFCs and protocols. The worst offender is Facebook. I will never have anything to do with Facebook. I really wish there were more search engine competitors, too. It's important to not have monopolies on information seeking.