> The impact on society is definitely real.
What impact do you mean and how do you know?
What impact do you mean and how do you know?
1) search engines are the dominant way to find information now.
2) conservatively, ≥80% of searches in US are through google.
3) google is not a passive observer of user search queries, but instead actively suggests queries to users.
It follows that there must be some impact. The "engagement" effect is this: I start a search for Depeche Mode, but get distracted by suggestions for J Depp. In contrast, DDG suggests Depakote, Depression, Dept of Revenue and a few other things. Other search engines seem to be less aggressive.
Yeah, that's why I'm asking...
The interesting artifact of this is that the dominant set of queries becomes a very small proper subset of natural/organic queries.