Ask HN: Why is Google a shopping site now?

2 points by le-mark ↗ HN
I literally can’t search for any physical object without getting all product links and prices. Fuck ads google is an online retail aggregator now? How is this acceptable to anyone?

3 comments

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Most consumer products & services are profit-optimized crap these days. The vast majority of people gripe about that, but they keep buying & using 'em.

Why should use of Google be different?

Now? Google Shopping, hotels, flights, etc. is at least 10 years old.
Even DuckDuckGo places product links above results that are not shopping-related. It must be SEO, which makes EVERY search site a shopping site.

I use several browsers, and I think one of them has an extension or setting that prioritizes Wikipedia (and Jimmy Wales’ banner ads begging money … where’s that WikiNag extension?)

I went to look up Feynman Path Integrals, and lo and behold, I can buy them on ebay.

https://i.ibb.co/c3X9zys/IMG-0801.jpg

Wikipedia did come in first, though. It’s a good starting point for many searches.

P.S. Try contributing $50 billion or so to Wikipedia. Your money’s no good. Maybe that’s why they come up short.