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Is Google about to destroy the web?

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  • 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.

  • 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.

  • NVIDIA is full of shit

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    I 100% know what DLSS is, though by the sounds of it you don't. It is "AI" as much as any other thing is "AI". It uses models to "learn" what it needs to reconstruct and how to reconstruct it. No, you don't. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Learning_Super_Sampling This is blatantly and monumentally wrong lol. You think it's literally rendering a dozen frames and then just picking the best one to show you out of them? Wow. Just wow lol. Literally in the docs: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NVIDIA/DLSS/main/doc/DLSS_Programming_Guide_Release.pdf What it does is allow you to run a game at higher settings than you could usually at a given framerate, with little to no loss of image quality. Where you could previously only run a game at 20fps at 1080p Ultra settings, you can now run it at 30fps at "1080p" Ultra, whereas to hit 30fps otherwise you might have to drop everything to Low settings. No it doesn't. It allows you to run a game at a higher resolution for no reason at all, instead of dropping to a lower resolution that your card can handle natively. That's it. Keep claiming otherwise, and you're just literally denying reality and the Nvidia link to the docs right in front of you.
  • Blocking real-world ads: is the future here?

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    Also a work of fiction
  • Google’s test turns search results into an AI-generated podcast

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    lupusblackfur@lemmy.worldL
    Oh, Google... Just eviler and eviler every day. Not only robbing creators of any monetization via clicking on links but now just blatantly stealing their content for an even more efficient theft model. FFS. I can't fucking wait to complete my de-googling project and get you the absolute fuck completely out of my life. I've developed a hatred for Google that actually rivals my hatred for Apple. ‍️
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    I just hear that they move to LibreOffice but not to Linux, ateast not right now.
  • 85K – A Melhor Opção para Quem Busca Diversão e Recompensas

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    Niemand hat geantwortet
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    [image: 8978adf5-b473-470c-9f21-62a31e2fbc77.gif]
  • How I use Mastodon in 2025 - fredrocha.net

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    Sure. Efficiency isn't everything, though. At the end of the article there are a few people to get you started. Then you can go to your favorites in that list, and follow some of the people THEY are following. Rinse and repeat, follow boosted folks. You'll have 100 souls in no time.
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    I bet that information was already available to business owners. In other words, they totally knew it was you complaining about the toilet paper they used for example.