It is sad. But it's not just google books, it's google search, google news, youtube, etc.
There was a time when all of google's properties catered to the users. Their search engine was the best. Google news was the best aggregate site. Youtube recommends used to be amazing to the point you could spend hours following their recommends.
Now google search, google news, youtube, etc are all garbage. It doesn't serve the people. It serves corporate interests. You can thank media companies and the elites who pressured them for that.
No need to cast aspersions on 'elites' and 'corporate interests', what is pressuring them is that the ratio of the amount of money coming in to that going out, has to be maintained at a certain level for Google to remain Google. They really have only two choices there, either sell more ads (generally means putting ads on more things, or coming up with new ways to charge for new things like being in the 'shopping' box on product searches) or cut costs which means shutting down projects, reducing staff, Etc. Depending on how you look at it, Google gets something like one 500th of what they used to get for an ad on their web site.
Am I cast aspersions or just stating facts? Google changed because of pressure from the elites and corporate interests who used the media to badger them. It certainly isn't in google's interest to make their product worse purely to benefit others.
Your previous comment was attributing without evidence, actions of malice by descriptive but undefined third parties. That is the definition of "casting aspersions."
"Stating facts" would start with something like, "See this evidence that Google's policies were changed by <corporate entity> or <person or persons>."
Since you are doing the former, and not the latter, I conclude that the answer to your question is that yes, you are casting aspersions.
I'd assume you'd already know that media and elite pressure is why google changed since most people here work in the tech industry. Are you new to HN or do you work in a non-tech industry?
This reporter claims that she got youtube to change it's search list.
These channels had been up for many years. Why do you think all of a sudden google decided to remove them?
Certainly it wasn't corporate, media or elite's pressure. So then who? Aliens? When chinese or russian social media companies remove and change their policies, why do you think that is? Aliens as well?
After 10 years of spectacular success of youtube being "you"tube, why did it suddenly become "corporate"tube? Why did they change their recommends, trending, etc? Must be aliens. It can't possibly be the elites and the media constantly attacking it?
"Facebook and Google are doomed, George Soros says"
Yeah, in the beginning it was to gather lots and lots of people, which you can only do by being useful or living up to your claims, and as it gathered attention from Governments and so on, it had to comply with their regulations, effectively making it less and less useful. I remember the days when I could find any PDFs back then! Those days are over.
There was a time when all of google's properties catered to the users. Their search engine was the best. Google news was the best aggregate site. Youtube recommends used to be amazing to the point you could spend hours following their recommends.
Now google search, google news, youtube, etc are all garbage. It doesn't serve the people. It serves corporate interests. You can thank media companies and the elites who pressured them for that.