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Is Google about to destroy the web?

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  • We have good options to replace Google Search. What good options exist to replace search on Google Maps?

    Edit: Also, I think they make most of their money off of ad-sense adds embedded in apps and websites. It'll be very difficult to weed all those out. I just use uBlock on Firefox and Blockada on Android.

    OsmAnd. There's also a new fork of Organic Maps called CoMaps after Organic had some drama. A bunch of Organic devs left and forked it into CoMaps.

  • Got a machine web

    It’s better than the rest

    Green to Red

    Machine web

    I'm gonna say it.

    Of the buttrock bands that followed Nirvana's model,... Bush was the best one, for three albums anyway.

  • 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.

    "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.

  • Totally agree with your sentiment. The web is changing. And most people hate change. That's why we see everyone hating on AI right now.

    In reality, LLMs are really useful and convenient. I use them every day. We and the internet just need to adapt to it. I don't have a good solution for it now.

  • For those who didn't get it... GOOGLE IS SHIT, DON'T USE!

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

  • Qwant was what let me switch off goog. I still use gmaps unfort my experiments with open source maps were failures.

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

    conveniently wrong, yeah

  • 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.

    No, but not for want of trying.

  • We have good options to replace Google Search. What good options exist to replace search on Google Maps?

    Edit: Also, I think they make most of their money off of ad-sense adds embedded in apps and websites. It'll be very difficult to weed all those out. I just use uBlock on Firefox and Blockada on Android.

    What are good Google alternatives that don’t rely on Google or Bing?

  • 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.

    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.

  • Quit.... Using... Google... Search

    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.

  • 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.

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

  • 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.

    Searxng - any of the instances hosted in Germany
    Brave search - but only search

  • 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.

    If you can afford to spend 10 bucks a month for a search engine, Kagi is pretty sleek. No ads, you can block/prioritize websites, good bangs, convinient CSS field for easy modding.

    It does AI stuff too, but it's optional as the other non-standard search output fields.

  • But the point is that significantly lower traffic will kill the business model of many websites, and thus kill many websites.

    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.

  • 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.

    Dead Internet theorists were right, just a half decade or so early.

  • But it’s the normies we need to reach.

    Hey, is that the ICQ logo?

  • AI is making searching easier and more convenient and reducing the amount of clicks (often to zero) you need before you get the inaccurate information you didn't want.

    Ftfy

  • 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.

  • 714 Stimmen
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    All the research I am aware of - including what I referenced in the previous comment, is that people are honest by default, except for a few people who lie a lot. Boris Johnson is a serial liar and clearly falls into that camp. I believe that you believe that, but a couple of surveys are not a sufficient argument to prove the fundamental good of all humanity. If honesty were not the default, why would we believe what anyone has to say in situations where they have an incentive to lie, which is often? Why are such a small proportion of people criminals and fraudsters when for a lot of crimes, someone smart and cautious has a very low chance of being caught? I think this is just a lack of imagination. i will go through your scenarios and provide an answer but i don't think it's going to achieve anything, we just fundamentally disagree on this. why would we believe what anyone has to say in situations where they have an incentive to lie, which is often? You shouldn't. edit : You use experience with this person or in general, to make a judgement call about whether or not you want to listen to what they have to say until more data is available. You continue to refine based on accumulated experience. Why are such a small proportion of people criminals and fraudsters when for a lot of crimes, someone smart and cautious has a very low chance of being caught? A lot of assumptions and leaps here. Firstly crime implies actual law, which is different in different places, so let's assume for now we are talking about the current laws in the uk. Criminals implies someone who has been caught and prosecuted for breaking a law, I'm going with that assumption because "everyone who has ever broken a law" is a ridiculous interpretation. So to encompass the assumptions: Why are such a small proportion of people who have been caught and prosecuted for breaking the law in the uk, when someone smart and caution has a very low chance of being caught? I hope you can see how nonsensical that question is. The evolutionary argument goes like this: social animals have selection pressure for traits that help the social group, because the social group contains related individuals, as well as carrying memetically inheritable behaviours. This means that the most successful groups are the ones that work well together. A group first of all has an incentive to punish individuals who act selfishly to harm the group - this will mean the group contains mostly individuals who, through self interest, will not betray the group. But a group which doesn’t have to spend energy finding and punishing traitorous individuals because it doesn’t contain as many in the first place will do even better. This creates a selection pressure behind mere self interest. That's a nicely worded very bias interpretation. social animals have selection pressure for traits that help the social group, because the social group contains related individuals, as well as carrying memetically inheritable behaviours. This is fine. This means that the most successful groups are the ones that work well together. That's a jump, working well together might not be the desirable trait in this instance. But let's assume it is for now. A group first of all has an incentive to punish individuals who act selfishly to harm the group - this will mean the group contains mostly individuals who, through self interest, will not betray the group. Reductive and assumptive, you're also conflating selfishness with betrayal, you can have on without the other, depending on perceived definitions of course. But a group which doesn’t have to spend energy finding and punishing traitorous individuals because it doesn’t contain as many in the first place will do even better. This creates a selection pressure behind mere self interest. Additional reduction and a further unsupported jump, individuals are more than just a single trait, selfishness might be desirable in certain scenarios or it might be a part of an individual who's other traits make up for it in a tribal context. The process of seeking and the focused attention might be a preferential selection trait that benefits the group. Powerful grifters try to protect themselves yes, but who got punished for pointing out that Boris is a serial liar? Everyone who has been negatively impacted by the policies enacted and consequences of everything that was achieved on the back of those lies. Because being ignored is still a punishment if there are negative consequences. But let's pick a more active punishment, protesting. Protest in a way we don't like or about a subject we don't approve of, it's now illegal to protest unless we give permission. That's reductive, but indicative of what happened in broad strokes. Have you read what the current government has said about the previous one? I'd imagine something along the lines of what the previous government said about the one before ? As a society we generally hate that kind of behaviour. Society as a whole does not protect wealth and power; wealth and power forms its own group which tries to protect itself. Depends on how you define society as a whole. By population, i agree. By actual power to enact change(without extreme measures), less so Convenient that you don't include the wealth and power as part of society, like its some other separate thing. You should care because it entirely colours how you interact with political life. “Shady behaviour” is about intent as well as outcome, and we are talking in this thread about shady behaviour, and hence about intent. See [POINT A]
  • Huawei shows off AI computing system to rival Nvidia's top product

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    C
    Huawei was uniquely, specifically, forced out of the US market around the time they were completing for 5G Tower standards.
  • Game Dev Fundamentals - Trevors-Tutorials.com #1

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    This video complements the text tutorial at https://trevors-tutorials.com/0001-game-dev-fundamentals/ Trevors-Tutorials.com is where you can find free programming tutorials. The focus is on Go and Ebitengine game development. Watch the channel introduction for more info.
  • Using Clouds for too long might have made you incompetent

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    I was recruited as an R&D engineer by a company that was sales focused. It was pretty funny being recruited like a new sales hire: limo from the airport, etc. Limo driver didn't work direct for the company but she did a lot of work for them, it was an hour drive both ways to/from the "big" airport they used. She said most of the sales recruits she drove in were clueless kids, no idea how the world worked yet at all - gunning for a big commission job where 9/10 hires wash out within a year. At least after I arrived on-site I spent the day with my prospective new department, that was a pretty decent process. The one guy I didn't interview well with turned out to be the guy who had applied to the spot I was taking and had been passed over. As I was walking in on my first day he was just finishing moving his stuff out of the window-office desk he was giving up for me, into a cube. I can understand why he was a little prickly.
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    I wonder if they could develop this into a tooth coating. Preventing biofilms would go a long way to preventing cavities.
  • Have LLMs Finally Mastered Geolocation? - bellingcat

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    Depends on who programed the AI - and no, it is not Kyoto
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    Cool, so that's a specific problem with your needed use case. That's not what you said before.
  • 54 Stimmen
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    halcyon@discuss.tchncs.deH
    Though babble fish is a funny term, Douglas Adams named the creature "Babel fish", after the biblical story of the tower of Babel.