Although I do agree with criticisms of his writing and have felt the same in his later books (as I was too young to feel the poor writing when I read A&D, Da Vinci Code etc.), I know that I'll get his next book when it releases.
I like that his works mention random things that you can then read about from other sources, information that are tangents to search off of. It helps that all his books are easy page-turning reads.
But yeah, about his writing, I remember the latest (Origin) having some atrocious lines
Beyond 10 blue links, certain niches organic results have been pushed down the page and placed under G specific results (when I say certain, nowadays it's most).
Celebritynetworth is an example of this where a site had some unique content, G apparently realised that lots of people search for such stuff, asked the owner for an API and then eventually scraped it. A rough version of events, more details below.
There are lots of examples of well performing sites/niches where similar has happened.
Due to heavy regulations on the shipbreaking industry in Western countries, > 50% of ships worldwide are (or were, when the documentary was made) dismantled in Alang, India.
The industry is extremely polluting (to the environment and the workers) and the working conditions (incl. safety) are dire to put it nicely.
For anyone even mildly interested in crime, exploitation, vigilantes and other human stories across the oceans, check out The Outlaw Ocean by NYT journalist Ian Urbina. Brilliant work.
I'm in the middle of it right now! In addition to some amazing first-person narrative about life at sea, it does answer a lot of the "why don't they just" questions in this thread. However he doesn't offer a solution to the fundamental tragedy of the commons problem. As with many other global problems, there seems no way to solve this without global government co-ordination, which seems pretty unlikely.
If you want to read a good non-fiction on the Sri Lankan civil war, check out "The Divided Island" by Samanth Subramaniam.