Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. … For this type of reason and historical experience with other media [Bagdikian 83], we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.

The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine

Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, 1998

[–] Gsus4@mander.xyz 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

But the quote itself admits that the consumers here are the advertisers, it is natural that the users have little say. The users are being milked/harvested/herded/served to the consumers

[–] reddit_sux@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

He recognises that is the way ahead. He is not saying that it is wrong. He knew the evil and decided to embrace it wholly.