It has been having problems the last few weeks because google was blocking frequent request from accounts (like the anonymous accounts you use with aurora.

Economy is a huge driving factor to these decisions.

This is largely due to the unusually low interest rate environment we’re used to in the past 20+ years. With the low interest rates, everyone at all levels are taking on more loans. US Govt just uncapped the debt ceiling recently so they could borrow more; companies are used to getting “free” money from investors who take on cheap loans in hopes for a big payout; individuals are leveraging more and more into mortgages because property values go up, and dammit I’m working full time and I demand annual international vacations.

All these money pumped into the system is creating more opportunities to earn more, which results in more spending (that’s partially driven by the ever growing of loans), which leads to the higher rate of inflation. And to tame that inflation, the only tool we’d have at our disposal is to dial up the interest rate.

Higher interest rate leads to lesser money floating around; on the corporate side, it means lesser free money from investors because they’re no longer getting the cheap loans. As result of that, companies have to try to extract more out of what they’ve already got to keep things a float. More ads, less freebies/discounts, increasing costs, etc. are just the beginning. Pretty soon, those with less than solid business model will be unable to keep their entire staff and even larger rate of layoffs will follow, followed by eventual closures.

There’s no push back on this; individual push back or not, the companies are more likely to answer to their shareholders’ demand for profit than users’ demand for things of what was. More and more companies will follow suit and/or go under. What’s coming isn’t going to be pretty, sadly.