Not an answer to the question

A father in Dammam types the name of the nappies his daughter uses into a shopping app and gets a screen of things he did not ask for.

The first four are other makes. They carry small grey labels saying they were paid for, labels that on a phone, at eleven at night, with a child crying in the next room, look like nothing at all. The pack he wanted is sixth. He buys the second one by mistake.

There was a time when a search box felt like a promise. You told it what you wanted and it tried to find it, and the advertising sat to one side, clearly marked, easy to ignore. That bargain was fair enough that most people accepted it.

Now the order of the list often says less about what fits the search than about who paid most to be there. The bigger the store, the more of the screen is for sale.

It costs him more than time. The makers of the nappies he wanted now have to pay to appear above their own name, and the makers of the ones he bought paid to appear there too. Both bills end up inside the price of a pack. Everyone selling on that shelf pays the toll, and everyone buying from it pays it again at the checkout.

Newspapers learned, slowly, to keep the advert away from the news. The screen in his hand is learning the opposite.

A list sorted by who paid is an honest enough thing to sell. It is just not an answer to the question he asked.