The article was not at all what I expected! I agree that it's hard to gauge the usefulness of applying the best minds to do banal work. After all that the work

The article was not at all what I expected! I agree that it's hard to gauge the usefulness of applying the best minds to do banal work. After all that the work of making people click on ads is what allowed Google to benefit the world with stuff like Google Maps. But it also created a monopoly: for every Google Maps, there's a Waze left in its wake. What's truly disheartening about this mercenary culture is not that one can't predict the usefulness of making people click on ads, but that there are so many other tasks which are patently more useful - but whose sponsors have drastically smaller pockets than a FAANG. I'm not talking about lofty projects, like curing cancer and flying to Mars. I'm talking about banal stuff that, at some point of another, affects everyone's. Like trying to navigate a government's website.