Previously, if you searched for "mortgage calculator" in Google, you'd get one at the top, embedded in the page. It was fast, simple and did what you wanted. I

Previously, if you searched for "mortgage calculator" in Google, you'd get one at the top, embedded in the page. It was fast, simple and did what you wanted. I guess because of "competition" it was removed at some point. Now all the top results are terrible. The sites are slow. They ask too many questsions. They're clearly trying to generate leads and sell ads. Whereas Google's just... worked. There are good calculators out there but they don't rank as highly. How exactly is this good for consumers? My point is that a lot of publishers are what I call "low value". They're rent-seekers. They have easily obtained information, often user-generated, and their role is to gatekeep that and make you click just one more page to get a result because hey that's another slew of ads they can show you. I'm sympathetic to the argument that LLMs steal. At the same time, we have to recognize that a lot of publishers are intentionally useless rent-seekers so it's hard for me to feel sorry for them.