There are giant swaths of area with no coverage, especially in the mountains of arizona, including the freeways and especially highways. The entire western US can be spotty with signal out in the great wide open. It isn’t until the Midwest and more east that one should largely not worry about signal coverage anymore.

What is a non-mechanical mechanical part?

Maybe it is my ad blocker that is filtering this kind of stuff for me. Or maybe the things I look up most often are specific enough that there isn’t much bullshit or clickbaity stuff to show. Sure, I’ll see the occasional “Sponsored” link. I think my brain just auto-filters those and I don’t even take notice. I really don’t intend to sound like a Google fanboy - I’m not. I just don’t seem to experience this, but hear people say this a lot. The attached screenshot seems like a typical result for something I’d look up, and it’s exactly what I’m looking for. In any case, thanks for your perspective. I’m going to try to be more conscious to see if I’m just fooling myself.

As a programmer and system admin, I’ve been using Google since its inception, too. I can’t think of an instance that I’ve failed to find whatever I’m looking for in recent times. People say what you’re saying a lot, so I don’t doubt you. It just makes me wonder what it is you guys are searching for because I search for some extremely obscure stuff quite often with no issues. This is all to say, I have a fair share of qualms with Google, but the search engine itself isn’t one of them.

I wouldn’t mind if they moved Signal to use smart contracts for messaging, but call they have to come up with is crypto? Lol.

You do not need crypto to call with it. It is simply a payment mechanism. I don’t see anything wrong with it. If anyone is uninterested, they can simply turn it off or not use it. Conversely, burning up fees to interact with smart contracts to message is what seems more silly to me. There’d be no opting out of that.

I hear what you’re saying and I’m not trying to promote Whatsapp, but want to note that backups do offer encryption. They did not use to and I believe it is off by default, however.

I’ve used it for years and somehow had no clue they even had sms support. Doesn’t really matter to me because SMS is wildly unreliable for the location I’m at anyway. I’d rather use the actual app if still given the choice. I can understand the move to drop support for it, to be honest.

I can infer what you mean by “particular things”, but I’ve never really heard of that amongst anyone I know. Many people think that of whatsapp, too.