If I'm looking for a good hotel in x, I probably want good information on the quality of hotels in x. I don't want ads about the hotels.

Yes that's true. (Hilariously, duckduckgo does not track me so my search history is hard to work out ...)

OK: who was phil hartman, alan may quotes, history of netscape, treatment for wrenched neck muscle, dad jokes and campsites in the new forest.

So yes, you could sell me something related to each of those (a dad joke book, a phil hartman dvd) but there is no commercial intent there except for the last, and that's more research than intent.

I am not spending my life in a state of purchasing arousal (I think the analogy to women navigating a world of men is interesting)

But more importantly the lead quality is terrible. I think this is what people are learning - FAANG almost always provides low quality lead density. (More research needed)

It may be a good explanation of Amazon's 20 billion dollar new ad business - if you search for anything in amazon you are almost certainly doing so with commercial intent.

Jeff might win again :-)

Commercial intent is not consent to be tracked and tagged. Would you visit a Walmart if you knew it had cameras tracking your every eye movement, even if they claimed it was anonymized?

Off-topic subject aside, for the vast majority of people the answer would be "yes". That still doesn't make it okay, but I feel like it highlights why that's not a good way to divine whether or not something is ok.