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Google has been alternating between neglecting and actively making search worse for years. Tacking on some hastily cobbled together AI product certainly hasn't
by bigfatkitten 2y ago
Google has been alternating between neglecting and actively making search worse for years. Tacking on some hastily cobbled together AI product certainly hasn't helped them.
- PaulHoule 2y agoHow much does search really matter to Google? I mean, it's just another channel for ads the way YouTube and GMail are, not to mention a whole network that runs ads on other people's web sites.
- bigfatkitten 2y agoBecause it's still their main cash cow, which they'll eventually enshittify it to the point where users move elsewhere.
- PaulHoule 2y agoIs that still true? 20 years ago when a video game came out you would find walkthroughs on the web. Now you get senseless spam on Fandom and if you want a walkthrough you might need to seek through 50 hours of video to find the 20 seconds you need and hope they didn’t edit the important bit out. That is, enshittification has already damaged the web enough that people aren’t making content for it, the platform has been in decline a long time.
- bigfatkitten 2y agoThe cash cow part is, in that search is still around 60%. Most of the world has grown accustomed to the web being a cesspool, so whether enshittification will lead to the end of Google is an open question. https://www.abc.xyz/assets/91/b3/3f9213d14ce3ae27e1038e01a0e0/2024q1-alphabet-earnings-release-pdf.pdf https://www.abc.xyz/assets/91/b3/3f9213d14ce3ae27e1038e01a0e...
- iamsahaj 2y agoThey are playing both sides. For the users, they are giving AI search, which takes up prime real-estate where content could be. And for the businesses, they are forcing them to pay more and more to get their result on that very prime real-estate Depends on how narrow they can stretch the gap