The latest Google algorithm update has severely hurt traditional publishers and promoted many 'clickbait' sites. Intended consequences?

Very interesting study of how Google's search snippets amplify political partisanship. [PDF]

A: Google optimises snippets for CTR.

B: Confirmation bias means people click on results that align with their existing political views.

A + B = C: Auto-generated search snippets become optimised for political bias.

Solution (for Google) is to simply make search snippets adhere to pages' meta descriptions. Then Google can pass the political bias buck to the webpage itself.

Is Google's AMP project a good thing for the web? Or is it an attempt by Google to re-shape the web in their own limited format?

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