Google still has powerful boolean operators. If you use those with intentionality, and pick the hidden 'verbatim' option, you'll have a decent chance of finding what you need. However, these are all vestigial features that a minority of users employ.

The vast, vast majority of users are funneled into product choices. In a way, it helps to see that as the core function, and everything else as a secondary funnel towards that primary funnel. The search engine is designed to work so that people use it, but the end goal is for ads/SEO to be effective for the great mass of users that are particularly vulnerable to them. The GP was looking for price differences, which is something many websites base their business off of, but that's still a tiny portion of the whole and not something Google needs to optimize for compared to the misleading but lucrative results the GP had to sift through.

If you have a life where you pursue autonomy, the development of your capacities, and a sense of meaningfulness in what you do, you'll be able to withstand and enjoy much more than you think. If you don't pursue these things, everything will be harder.

Simply spending your time with more intentionality and being conscious of each moment changes so much.

It's easier to find satisfaction in goals outside of your own self, because they introduce a finite boundary whereas the self is infinite in its desires

Try to picture what a confident and well-adjusted person would do in the same situation, to determine if you are currently acting out because of trauma or fear.

If you have a habit, ask yourself what it will look like if it continues uninterrupted for decades. Conversely, try to picture what a habit you don't currently have could do for you over the same timespan.

1. An employee of Google makes propellers for Google.

2. The sum of their work benefits Google, either in profit, new assets or some other way, because Google isn't employing them just for fun

3. As an adtech company, surveillance and datagathering are at the core of Google's activities and modus operandi.

4. The growth in power and reach of Google thus directly implies increased surveillance

5. As per 2., The employee currently dedicates their working life to making Google more successful and powerful

6. Therefore the employee furthers surveillance and datagathering, even if their contribution might be small

Can you imagine someone saying "Nah I'm not responsible for what the Russian army does, I'm just paid by them to help with logistics"?

- All the FAANG/FAANG suppliers

- All startups or established projects that involve data gathering, advertising, SEO, skinner boxes, dopamine response, parasocial relationship manipulation, optimizing time spent on controlled platforms and products

- All projects that facilitate the above as suppliers or second-order businesses

- All gig economy/surveilled/taylorized work facilitators

- All coding work that involves ranking and surveilling people for life altering services such as loans, insurance, healthcare

- All coding work done to optimize the wealth of the noble class (themselves the main beneficiaries of surveillance)

...there's probably not much left. Even if you maintain a strict definition and include only direct adtech shenanigans I wouldn't be surprised if that were a huge number in and of itself.

It directly mirrors the feudal system with a tiny portion of the population living in unimaginable luxury and employing another much larger but still small portion overall to keep the hierarchy running. In other words, billionaires supported by well-compensated SWE vassals who devise ever more sophisticated tools to extract value and data-powered obedience through surveillance from regular workers.