This will probably get me in trouble but I’ll admit it: I don’t like Google. Yes, I use Gmail because, to paraphrase those bumper stickers on Teslas, I started using it before I knew they were evil. I have an Android phone cuz it’s either Google or Apple. Pick your poison. But I don’t search with Google. I use Qwant or DuckDuckGo. Besides believing Google is a toxic company, it does stuff that’s either really scary or really stupid. Two cases in point.

• Google Maps once sent me down a dead-end street then told me to turn around and go back to the main road I’d been traveling on before turning. Why? Hard to say, but there was a house for sale at the end of that dead end. Coincidence? I think not. Either the homeowner worked for Google and tweaked the search in his favor or the realtor paid Google to randomly send people down that road.
• The only things I search for in Google are phone numbers. When I get a call from a number I don’t know, I don’t answer it, of course, but I also look it up to see if it’s legit or, more likely, spam. Quite often, Google will give me a list of entries, some of which display the following message:

Can anyone explain why I’d want to do a search without the only item I was searching for? No, cuz there is no valid explanation. What I usually get are listings of businesses who paid Google to show them when there are few other results. I guess this is what’s known as “search engine optimization”.

Blah!