Very true article about how and why websites see less traffic and google slowly expands their semi-monopoly even further:
https://hackernoon.com/how-wikipedia-lost-3-billion-organic-search-visits-to-google-in-2019-qz6630u6
Consider to use the search feature of your browser and search directly on Wikipedia for things you want to know.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-or-remove-search-engine-firefox
Protip: use keywords like "wen" or "wde" or just "w" to start you searches with those keywords and automatically end up on the search engine of your desire.
Which is precisely why the whole anti #acta2 campaign pissed me off so much, as it was so dumb and so openly intended on preserving this behaviour of Google. Specifically these large boxes with direct results from Wikipedia or public dictionaries are 100% stealing traffic from these websites, and Google directly benefits on that.
@kravietz @sheogorath@microblog.shivering-isles.com go and look up German "Leistungsschutzrecht". google would continue, but everyone else would be fucked. Google would get sued and offer the non-choice to be completely removed from search results. Everyone else does not have the same bargaining power, so with this kind of legislation you only further cement the monopoly.
When the whole shitstorm broke out I did spend a few weeks following up and reading the actual text of the directive.
The criticism was 90% totally manipulated ("ACTA2" name) and exaggerated or even completely invented ("ban private blogs" etc). The remaining 10% of valid criticism was fixed in the subsequent drafts.
But the key thing was if the legislation was bad for Google, they would not so aggressively lobby against it. And they did as hell, so I'm confident :)
