I think the issue is that Google did not launch as an "information-search tool". It slowly transitioned into one in line with advertising becoming its business

I think the issue is that Google did not launch as an "information-search tool". It slowly transitioned into one in line with advertising becoming its business model. Weirdly we are back where we started and I find the portal analogy actually very apt. Yes the technology has improved, but the Google of today is much closer to 2000 Yahoo![1] than 2000 Google[2] - trying to curate and own as much of the internet browsing experience as possible. Taken to the extreme, Google would be very happy to keep a copy of every website and only let you browse the internet on its terms in its walled garden. We're already heading there with AMP. Do we want to sacrifice a couple of seconds of our time for that? [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20000229042533/http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=YANKEES https://web.archive.org/web/20000229042533/http://search.yah... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20130122200020/http://www.google.com/search?q=yankees https://web.archive.org/web/20130122200020/http://www.google...