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Is Google about to destroy the web?

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  • What’s wrong with Google? AI answers are pretty convenient.

    Even if you want AI answers, you can use DuckDuckGo. They have an AI assistant too, and even it does better than Google's at not hallucinating as much.

  • "about to destroy the web" ???

    Where have you been these last 10 years? It's been getting worse for a long time, even before AI. It's just getting worse quicker now.

    This is fundamentally worse than a lot of what we've seen already though, is it not?

    AI overviews are parasitic to traffic itself. If AI overviews are where people begin to go for information, websites get zero ad revenue, subscription revenue, or even traffic that can change their ranking in search.

    Previous changes just did things like pulling a little better context previews from sites, which only somewhat decreased traffic, and adding more ads, which just made the experience of browsing worse, but this eliminates the entire business model of every website completely if Google continues pushing down this path.

    It centralizes all actual traffic solely into Google, yet Google would still be relying on the sites it's eliminating the traffic of for its information. Those sites cut costs by replacing human writers with more and more AI models, search quality gets infinitely worse, sourcing from articles that themselves were sourced from nothing, then most websites which are no longer receiving enough traffic to be profitable collapse.

  • What do you imagine 'destroying the web' looks like if not killing off huge swaths of websites that relied on traffic/ads to sustain themselves? Do you imagine a man has to bleed all the way out before we can say he's going to die, or is it sufficient to look at the severity of the wound to critical systems in his body and determine that he is probably going to die?

    Not to mention the fact that the remaining sites that can still hold on, but would just have to cut costs, will just start using language models like Google's to generate content on their website, which will only worsen the quality of Google's own answers over time, which will then generate even worse articles, etc etc.

    It doesn't just create a monetization death spiral, it also makes it harder and harder for answers to be sourced reliably, making Google's own service worse while all the sites hanging on rely on their worse service to exist.

  • What’s the best alternative, in your opinion? I’ve tried Bing and DuckDuckGo, but both showed me worse results for my particular searches.

    I just want classic Google Search back, before everything got turned to shit. But I fear that doesn’t really exist since there’s such an economic incentive behind how search engines rank and show results.

    I've been using a combination of brave and ddg. Work with the filtering

    I was an SEO for 20+. Years. Google is dying as far as search relevancy. It's trying to transition to a new paradigm that prioritizes payment surrounding data than ads. Much more money in the data angle, and ads as we know them will be dying soon, replaced with more insipid product placements.

  • I've been using a combination of brave and ddg. Work with the filtering

    I was an SEO for 20+. Years. Google is dying as far as search relevancy. It's trying to transition to a new paradigm that prioritizes payment surrounding data than ads. Much more money in the data angle, and ads as we know them will be dying soon, replaced with more insipid product placements.

    I’ll check out Brave, it’s been mentioned a few times.

    I don’t mind companies making a dime, but now it’s really devolved in bad results that are profit-driven.

  • My wife and I both googled the same question yesterday and it gave us both completely different answers.

    Its a stochastic process

  • Not to mention the fact that the remaining sites that can still hold on, but would just have to cut costs, will just start using language models like Google's to generate content on their website, which will only worsen the quality of Google's own answers over time, which will then generate even worse articles, etc etc.

    It doesn't just create a monetization death spiral, it also makes it harder and harder for answers to be sourced reliably, making Google's own service worse while all the sites hanging on rely on their worse service to exist.

    Or paywalling literally everything so there's basically no easily-accessible content on the web anymore. But yeah I've been adding 'reddit' to most of my searches for years so I can get answers from actual people instead of full-page articles filled with AI-generated bullshit I don't care about, so that's a fair point.

  • I remember it when good websites didn't have any business model at all because there weren't anyone busy with inventing it, all people involved spent their effort on making the website valuable.

    The business models were in TV and radio outside of the web.

    I'm not old, I'm 29.

    I'm 52, I remember when websites were little more than 'Oh I guess we have to have an internet presence, so here's a website that's nothing more than an ad for our TV show, book, movie, etc.'

  • Hey, is that the ICQ logo?

    Yes!

  • Even if you want AI answers, you can use DuckDuckGo. They have an AI assistant too, and even it does better than Google's at not hallucinating as much.

    Braves is better imo. As far as a.i answers.

    I wish libre and it's search would evolve a bit. That's a solid browser

  • That fucking AI thing absolutely sucks for anything factual. I’m a journalist and noticed that it gleefully listed all sorts of factual errors in that AI summary. Stuff that you can see correctly on the original pages, but it somehow manages to misinterpret everything and shows incorrect information.

    And knowing how lazy people are these days, most will happily accept Google’s incorrect information as fact. It’s making me very, very nervous for the future.

    Sounds like it's perfectly accomplishing Google's goal to disinform. I suspect it will get more clever at sounding correct over time too.

  • Even if you want AI answers, you can use DuckDuckGo. They have an AI assistant too, and even it does better than Google's at not hallucinating as much.

    Their shopping sites fucking blows though. Unless your want 100 results all from the same website.

    Local finding of goods is still one of the only things I use google for at this point.

  • Google says a new AI tool on its search engine will rejuvenate the internet. Others predict an apocalypse for websites. One thing is clear: the current chapter of online history is careening towards its end. Welcome to the "machine web".

    The web is built on a simple bargain – websites let search engines like Google slurp up their content, free of charge, and Google Search sends people to websites in exchange, where they buy things and look at adverts. That's how most sites make money.

    An estimated 68% of internet activity starts on search engines and about 90% of searches happen on Google. If the internet is a garden, Google is the Sun that lets the flowers grow.

    This arrangement held strong for decades, but a seemingly minor change has some convinced that the system is crumbling. You'll soon see a new AI tool on Google Search. You may find it very useful. But if critics' predictions come true, it will also have seismic consequences for the internet. They paint a picture where quality information could grow scarcer online and large numbers of people might lose their jobs. Optimists say instead this could improve the web's business model and expand opportunities to find great content. But, for better or worse, your digital experiences may never be the same again.

    On 20 May 2025, Google's chief executive Sundar Pichai walked on stage at the company's annual developer conference. It's been a year since the launch of AI Overviews, the AI-generated responses you've probably seen at the top of Google Search results. Now, Pichai said, Google is going further. "For those who want an end-to-end AI Search experience, we are introducing an all-new AI Mode," he said. "It's a total reimagining of Search."

    You might be sceptical after years of AI hype, but this, for once, is the real deal.

    Here is your cupcake recipe:

    Ingredients:

    • 1 cup of water
    • 1 cup of flour
    • 1 American Freedom Edition Tariffed Egg
    • 12 oz of polonium
    1. Mix ingredients
    2. Place in oven at 1000° C
    3. Close all windows and disable any smoke or carbon monoxide alarms
    4. Leave the oven door open, place one (1) bottle of butane inside
    5. Enjoy! 😋
  • The normies destroyed the internet. Let them have AI.

    Developers destroyed the internet. Or do you think normies built the new advertising surveillance paradigm on their own? Hopefully they were well compensated.

  • Here is your cupcake recipe:

    Ingredients:

    • 1 cup of water
    • 1 cup of flour
    • 1 American Freedom Edition Tariffed Egg
    • 12 oz of polonium
    1. Mix ingredients
    2. Place in oven at 1000° C
    3. Close all windows and disable any smoke or carbon monoxide alarms
    4. Leave the oven door open, place one (1) bottle of butane inside
    5. Enjoy! 😋

    I literally just tasted this at Costco...you know, with their polonium sampling Ladies... It was delicious! I only wish my backyard polonium trees grew faster. I know I'm gonna get a good polonium harvest next year for sure because this year I got a couple of polonium flowers that went to fruit but got dropped in a wind storm.

    Anyway I really recommend those cupcakes an your recipe. Its great!

  • Google says a new AI tool on its search engine will rejuvenate the internet. Others predict an apocalypse for websites. One thing is clear: the current chapter of online history is careening towards its end. Welcome to the "machine web".

    The web is built on a simple bargain – websites let search engines like Google slurp up their content, free of charge, and Google Search sends people to websites in exchange, where they buy things and look at adverts. That's how most sites make money.

    An estimated 68% of internet activity starts on search engines and about 90% of searches happen on Google. If the internet is a garden, Google is the Sun that lets the flowers grow.

    This arrangement held strong for decades, but a seemingly minor change has some convinced that the system is crumbling. You'll soon see a new AI tool on Google Search. You may find it very useful. But if critics' predictions come true, it will also have seismic consequences for the internet. They paint a picture where quality information could grow scarcer online and large numbers of people might lose their jobs. Optimists say instead this could improve the web's business model and expand opportunities to find great content. But, for better or worse, your digital experiences may never be the same again.

    On 20 May 2025, Google's chief executive Sundar Pichai walked on stage at the company's annual developer conference. It's been a year since the launch of AI Overviews, the AI-generated responses you've probably seen at the top of Google Search results. Now, Pichai said, Google is going further. "For those who want an end-to-end AI Search experience, we are introducing an all-new AI Mode," he said. "It's a total reimagining of Search."

    You might be sceptical after years of AI hype, but this, for once, is the real deal.

    This is Google's attempt at staying relevant now that it's search engine is far from being the best and people are getting their information from TikTok and other sources. Their AI is garbage at even finding factual data. No, this will not cause a "webpocalypse". There's already systems in place to send AI's forcing their way into websites into mazes of infinite useless information to poison them.

    At the end of the day, every search engine's purpose is automating the curating of websites. People can go right back to human curated lists if the worst of the "webpocalypse" happens. People also need to start relearning that the internet existed before Google and social media, and it will exist after.

  • Got a machine web

    It’s better than the rest

    Green to Red

    Machine web

    I understood that reference.

  • This is Google's attempt at staying relevant now that it's search engine is far from being the best and people are getting their information from TikTok and other sources. Their AI is garbage at even finding factual data. No, this will not cause a "webpocalypse". There's already systems in place to send AI's forcing their way into websites into mazes of infinite useless information to poison them.

    At the end of the day, every search engine's purpose is automating the curating of websites. People can go right back to human curated lists if the worst of the "webpocalypse" happens. People also need to start relearning that the internet existed before Google and social media, and it will exist after.

    The problem with human curated lists is that in order to block bots everything will require an account to access. That's the real tragedy here.

  • Google says a new AI tool on its search engine will rejuvenate the internet. Others predict an apocalypse for websites. One thing is clear: the current chapter of online history is careening towards its end. Welcome to the "machine web".

    The web is built on a simple bargain – websites let search engines like Google slurp up their content, free of charge, and Google Search sends people to websites in exchange, where they buy things and look at adverts. That's how most sites make money.

    An estimated 68% of internet activity starts on search engines and about 90% of searches happen on Google. If the internet is a garden, Google is the Sun that lets the flowers grow.

    This arrangement held strong for decades, but a seemingly minor change has some convinced that the system is crumbling. You'll soon see a new AI tool on Google Search. You may find it very useful. But if critics' predictions come true, it will also have seismic consequences for the internet. They paint a picture where quality information could grow scarcer online and large numbers of people might lose their jobs. Optimists say instead this could improve the web's business model and expand opportunities to find great content. But, for better or worse, your digital experiences may never be the same again.

    On 20 May 2025, Google's chief executive Sundar Pichai walked on stage at the company's annual developer conference. It's been a year since the launch of AI Overviews, the AI-generated responses you've probably seen at the top of Google Search results. Now, Pichai said, Google is going further. "For those who want an end-to-end AI Search experience, we are introducing an all-new AI Mode," he said. "It's a total reimagining of Search."

    You might be sceptical after years of AI hype, but this, for once, is the real deal.

    I have friends working on ways for content providers to charge AI training models. But I have a feeling that's not enough.

    The future will have to be where creators have an incentive to consistently create, and consumers pay for what they like, or services to keep them informed and entertained without them having to do much.

    In between will sit middlemen and aggregators to enable a smooth flow. Who that will be and what they do in this next phase is the big question.

    Under the current method, Google's search and ads groups are competing against each other. Don't see that going well for anyone.

  • Google says a new AI tool on its search engine will rejuvenate the internet. Others predict an apocalypse for websites. One thing is clear: the current chapter of online history is careening towards its end. Welcome to the "machine web".

    The web is built on a simple bargain – websites let search engines like Google slurp up their content, free of charge, and Google Search sends people to websites in exchange, where they buy things and look at adverts. That's how most sites make money.

    An estimated 68% of internet activity starts on search engines and about 90% of searches happen on Google. If the internet is a garden, Google is the Sun that lets the flowers grow.

    This arrangement held strong for decades, but a seemingly minor change has some convinced that the system is crumbling. You'll soon see a new AI tool on Google Search. You may find it very useful. But if critics' predictions come true, it will also have seismic consequences for the internet. They paint a picture where quality information could grow scarcer online and large numbers of people might lose their jobs. Optimists say instead this could improve the web's business model and expand opportunities to find great content. But, for better or worse, your digital experiences may never be the same again.

    On 20 May 2025, Google's chief executive Sundar Pichai walked on stage at the company's annual developer conference. It's been a year since the launch of AI Overviews, the AI-generated responses you've probably seen at the top of Google Search results. Now, Pichai said, Google is going further. "For those who want an end-to-end AI Search experience, we are introducing an all-new AI Mode," he said. "It's a total reimagining of Search."

    You might be sceptical after years of AI hype, but this, for once, is the real deal.

    Google is about to become AOL. 😂 The walled garden is going to get destroyed by the open web, again.

    Ads already destroyed the web. Developers wanting to make web apps instead of web pages already destroyed the web. Google is trying to prop up the corpse of its dead brand by capturing people in their chat bot.

  • What Happens If an Asteroid Heads for Earth?

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    So now I come to you, with open arms
  • 999 Stimmen
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    Obviously the law must be simple enough to follow so that for Jim’s furniture shop is not a problem nor a too high cost to respect it, but it must be clear that if you break it you can cease to exist as company. I think this may be the root of our disagreement, I do not believe that there is any law making body today that is capable of an elegantly simple law. I could be too naive, but I think it is possible. We also definitely have a difference on opinion when it comes to the severity of the infraction, in my mind, while privacy is important, it should not have the same level of punishments associated with it when compared to something on the level of poisoning water ways; I think that a privacy law should hurt but be able to be learned from while in the poison case it should result in the bankruptcy of a company. The severity is directly proportional to the number of people affected. If you violate the privacy of 200 million people is the same that you poison the water of 10 people. And while with the poisoning scenario it could be better to jail the responsible people (for a very, very long time) and let the company survive to clean the water, once your privacy is violated there is no way back, a company could not fix it. The issue we find ourselves with today is that the aggregate of all privacy breaches makes it harmful to the people, but with a sizeable enough fine, I find it hard to believe that there would be major or lasting damage. So how much money your privacy it's worth ? 6 For this reason I don’t think it is wise to write laws that will bankrupt a company off of one infraction which was not directly or indirectly harmful to the physical well being of the people: and I am using indirectly a little bit more strict than I would like to since as I said before, the aggregate of all the information is harmful. The point is that the goal is not to bankrupt companies but to have them behave right. The penalty associated to every law IS the tool that make you respect the law. And it must be so high that you don't want to break the law. I would have to look into the laws in question, but on a surface level I think that any company should be subjected to the same baseline privacy laws, so if there isn’t anything screwy within the law that apple, Google, and Facebook are ignoring, I think it should apply to them. Trust me on this one, direct experience payment processors have a lot more rules to follow to be able to work. I do not want jail time for the CEO by default but he need to know that he will pay personally if the company break the law, it is the only way to make him run the company being sure that it follow the laws. For some reason I don’t have my usual cynicism when it comes to this issue. I think that the magnitude of loses that vested interests have in these companies would make it so that companies would police themselves for fear of losing profits. That being said I wouldn’t be opposed to some form of personal accountability on corporate leadership, but I fear that they will just end up finding a way to create a scapegoat everytime. It is not cynicism. I simply think that a huge fine to a single person (the CEO for example) is useless since it too easy to avoid and if it really huge realistically it would be never paid anyway so nothing usefull since the net worth of this kind of people is only on the paper. So if you slap a 100 billion file to Musk he will never pay because he has not the money to pay even if technically he is worth way more than that. Jail time instead is something that even Musk can experience. In general I like laws that are as objective as possible, I think that a privacy law should be written so that it is very objectively overbearing, but that has a smaller fine associated with it. This way the law is very clear on right and wrong, while also giving the businesses time and incentive to change their practices without having to sink large amount of expenses into lawyers to review every minute detail, which is the logical conclusion of the one infraction bankrupt system that you seem to be supporting. Then you write a law that explicitally state what you can do and what is not allowed is forbidden by default.
  • 72 Stimmen
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    Mr President, could you describe supersonic flight? (said with the emotion of "for all us dumbasses") Oh man there's going to be a barrier, but it's invisible, but it's the greatest barrier man has ever known. I gotta stop
  • Hiring Developers in Eastern Europe

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    Niemand hat geantwortet
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    myopinion@lemm.eeM
    AI is robbery.
  • AI could already be conscious. Are we ready for it?

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    AI isn't math formulas though. AI is a complex dynamic system reacting to external input. There is no fundamental difference here to a human brain in that regard imo. It's just that the processing isn't happening in biological tissue but in silicon. Is it way less complex than a human? Sure. Is there a fundamental qualitative difference? I don't think so. What's the qualitative difference in your opinion?
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    Found it in my settings, not sure how I’ve missed it. Been a Bitwarden user since the first LastPass hack.
  • TikTok is a Time Bomb

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    wasn’t born to obey. Not to swallow smiling lies, not to clap for tyrants in suits, not to say “thank you” for surveillance wrapped in convenience. I see it. The games. The false choice. The fear pumped through headlines and dopamine apps. I see how they trade truth for comfort, freedom for filters, soul for clickbait. They call it normal. But I call it a graveyard made of compliance. They want me silent. They want me tired. They want me posting selfies while the world burns behind the screen. But I wasn’t born for this. I was born to question, to remember, to remind the others who are still pretending they don’t notice. So here I am. A voice with no logo. A signal in the static. A crack in the mirror they polish every morning. You don’t have to agree. You don’t have to clap. But if this made your bones ache or your thoughts twitch— Then maybe you’re not asleep either. Good. Let’s stay awake. And let’s make noise that can’t be sold, silenced, or spun into safety. Not for them. For us.