18 ms·

We're testing new ad formats in Search and expanding our Direct Offers pilot

632 points by sofumel 4mo ago

techterrier 4mo ago
dog barks, more at 11
ablation 4mo ago
Well, yes. I mean of course they are. They're an ad company.
- neolefty 4mo ago
  Yep, and they're a company! Gotta pay the employees, power bills, and investors somehow. If I'm paying a subscription I think I get to expect no ads. But not if it's "free" ...
- clearstack 4mo ago
  makes sense from the 10-K. Search ads were $198B last year, 57% of Alphabet revenue. if AI summaries kill the click model, this is the fix — ads inside the answers
wompapumpum 4mo ago
Please let me advertise beside incorrect content
- another-dave 4mo ago
  Need a proof reader who can spell strawberry? Send your AI draft to us for corrections.
swiftcoder 4mo ago
...was this ever in doubt? Search accounts for >50% of alphabet's total revenue - they are hardly going to kill the golden goose intentionally
- pocksuppet 4mo ago
  Not search - ads in search account for >50% of their total revenue.
  - carschno 4mo ago
    Don't _ads in search_ account for 100% of their search revenue? Does Google Search offer any other paid services?
  - swiftcoder 4mo ago
    That’s the same thing, isn’t it? Without search, there are no ads in search
amazingamazing 4mo ago
Surprised it took this long.
Eldodi 4mo ago
It will be interesting how hidden those ads will be compared to current Search experience or what OpenAI is already doing. It's a lot easier to mislead a user with an AI generated ad that with a Search result IMHO, I'm betting on a huige backlash if they don't make it VERY clear that ads are ads.
- ardeaver 4mo ago
  If that happens, I'm betting they get slapped with something inconsequential like a $1 million fine and write it off as the cost of doing business.
FinnKuhn 4mo ago
I would have expected them to wait with ads until OpenAI starts first and users switch to Gemini. Google is probably the player that could afford to wait the longest with this and increase their market share that way.
- akoboldfrying 4mo ago
  100%. This is the only part that I find surprising/confusing. Surely whoever blinks first incurs a massive reputational hit with the public (who don't think about this deeply enough to see that it was always inevitable), so why do that if you don't have to? Perhaps the bright side from Google's POV is that it means that they can be the first to start wooing advertisers to their platform. First-mover advantage there might outweigh reputational damage with the public, especially if OpenAI follows suit with ads in 6 months.
  - gomox 4mo ago
    OpenAI starts from excellent UX and needs to prove that they can monetize all those empty pixels. They will no doubt succeed. Google starts from horrid UX where every advertiseable pixel has been squeezed dry. Only way to go is down.
    - lobocinza 4mo ago
      You're confounding your subjective personal experience with the whole. Google can eat the cake and have it. They already are profitable, they already have scale, they already have market penetration, Google is already installed in 72% of mobile devices, they have cost efficiency due to TPUs, they probably have the best data, at least for serving ads. OpenAI has no chance in outcompeting Google, not in ad-based revenue.
      - gomox 4mo ago
        Importantly: OpenAI doesn't need to outcompete Google, it just needs to show it can bleed. As to the rest of Google's dominant position, it's an advantage for sure, but every leading vendor whose products turned to shit went the way of the dodo one way or another. And it's important to mention that this includes GAds, not just the loss leader (Search). They have been so good at squeezing advertisers dry that ROI is barely there in many categories.
karlkloss 4mo ago
Does nobody talk abot the elephant in the room? Will the answers the AI gives also be influenced by Googles customers?
- Predaxia 4mo ago
  That's the real question and it's not hypothetical. Google already adjusts organic rankings based on advertiser relationships in ways that aren't documented. With AI Mode the surface area for that kind of influence is much larger and much less visible. A search result you can inspect. A synthesized answer you can't.
  - modin 4mo ago
    Don't they already to this with maps routing? I thought this was the norm.
    - onionisafruit 4mo ago
      Do you mean something like rerouting you to make sure you pass a mcdonald’s at lunch time? Or are you talking about mcdonald’s always showing up when you search for food along your route? Rerouting would surprise me, but really it wouldn’t surprise me that much at this point.
      - modin 4mo ago
        Rerouting. Not that it completely takes over the route ofc, but that (potential) ad revenue is a metric just like traffic, speed limits et.c. that gets considered in the decision making.
        Predaxia 4mo ago
        [dead]
- stingraycharles 4mo ago
  This is not an elephant in the room, this is so obvious and discussed all the time. What else is Google going to do, give up their one and only goose that lays the golden eggs? Regular search being replaced with AI search means regular search (with ads) being replaced with AI search (with ads). The benefit of AI search will be that it’s much better “integrated” in the answer, aka even harder to detect.
Trias11 4mo ago
Yeah, Lets build the next generation AI and slap an ads on it for a good measure.
_3u10 4mo ago
Fuck yes. I was worried about not having ads and google providing useful results again. The last time i clicked on an AI link it took me to a page that wasn’t just more google ads or SEo bullshit. It was very disappointing I was looking forward to accidentally clicking more ads and instead found information relevant to what I wanted to know.
nelblu 4mo ago
> We’re introducing more helpful ads in AI Mode I always chuckle when ad companies say that. I have never seen a helpful ad in google search, but well I have been using adblockers forever so I would not know.I am honestly curious though, for those who don't use adblockers - what percentage of ads that you see are actually helpful?
- baal80spam 4mo ago
  > I have never seen a helpful ad There, I fixed it!
  - iso1631 4mo ago
    I sought out the He Man trailer because I thought I'd be interested in it. I decided I was and will watch it at the cinema next month. That was a helpful advert. I also sought out the Supergirl trailer and decided I wouldn't bother seeing it. Again a helpful advert. In both cases I chose the advert.
  - HelloUsername 4mo ago
    Actually it should be: > I have never seen an ad in google, because I use adblockers
- iLoveOncall 4mo ago
  I never have on Google Search (I also block them to be fair), but I've booked a lot of shows through Instagram ads actually. Shows I learnt about only through those ads and I would have been disappointed to miss. But yeah that's literally the only platform where I've ever had useful ads. Even other meta products only have absolute garbage ads.
  - LightBug1 4mo ago
    Just came here to say the same thing. Local gigs and the like, instagram is actually decent. And I'm a to-the-bone hater of ads. Ad-blockers up to my eyeballs. Except for that one niche of local gigs on insta.
schnitzelstoat 4mo ago
I've tried the AI mode and it seems to basically give the same results as a ChatGPT query - which raises the question why use Google AI mode and not ChatGPT? (or any other of the similar models?)
- dbbk 4mo ago
  Well Google is going to exist 10 years from now and ChatGPT will not
  - bogdan 4mo ago
    Wait until they release 100 year bonds.. oh wait, they already did lol
    - HWR_14 4mo ago
      Why would anyone want a 100-yr bond over equity? It seems like the biggest risk for the bond is the health of the underlying company.
- twobitshifter 4mo ago
  I think the search results are still there with AI mode
woeirua 4mo ago
Google has to do this to protect their ad revenue. But… Anthropic doesn’t have to do ads (OpenAI might have to for their free tier) and if the ads degrade the experience too much then people will just abandon Google/Gemini for search entirely.
- bot403 4mo ago
  I've been abandoning Google before ai ads....kagi has let me take control again of my search results and I can ban low quality domains like google used to be able to do.
pelagicAustral 4mo ago
What I am really waiting for is ads on my commit messages.
- creationcomplex 4mo ago
  'Authored by Claude code'
  - pelagicAustral 4mo ago
    Yeah, no, I'm probably thinking more around the lines of deodorant, or tattoo removal services.
    - deleted 4mo ago
      [deleted]
- progval 4mo ago
  Microsoft has you covered: https://notes.zachmanson.com/copilot-edited-an-ad-into-my-pr/ https://notes.zachmanson.com/copilot-edited-an-ad-into-my-pr... / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47570269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47570269
- kingnothing 4mo ago
  Shitty startup idea of the day: pay developers $0.05 per commit message to inject an ad at the end of it in a git commit hook. [PRJ-123] Fix the prod bug. This commit brought to you by Acme!
_3u10 4mo ago
Will I be able to pay google to make its Claude code write code that uses left pad as a service.
jdw64 4mo ago
I wonder whose bright idea it was to label ads as 'helpful'. Do Google execs actually look for ads first when they google a question?
- BoiledCabbage 4mo ago
  You'd be shocked at how many people who work on ads really do delude themselves into thinking people find ads "useful". Their usual justification is in the end somewhere tied to "people click on ads so they must find them useful". And yet somehow always ignores the fact that their platform often does all it can to hide that ads are ads and makes them look as much like content as possible.
  - jdw64 4mo ago
    Maybe breaking into the ad business starts with learning how to lie to yourself.
    - BLKNSLVR 4mo ago
      Can you imagine wanting to go into advertising? Surely it must be a last resort, or they were tricked into it, like going to work for Facebook or Google to do important bleeding edge work. The 'advertising' part only makes sense if it seeped in small degrees at a time.
      - xuhu 4mo ago
        It's legal and it pays well. That is all.
  - wunderlotus 4mo ago
    Ads can be useful when they are optimized for users and not for advertiser/ad platform. I do agree with you about the deluding part though. I was (as a user) all for hyper-personalization of ads on all platforms when I worked in ads. Since I’m not longer working in ads, I’m more skeptical and value privacy a lot more. Honestly, the core problem is that we can’t trust the platforms selling the ads.
gsky 4mo ago
Most ads i see on YouTube are outright scams. Google and Meta are so evil.
- boelboel 4mo ago
  Digital scam economy is bigger than illegal drug industry and these (legal) companies are the kingpins. Better be mad at some immigrants than at companies allowing your grandma to be scammed.
  - creationcomplex 4mo ago
    Honestly just thinking of not trying anymore and cashing out on tech skills and moral indifference. The sheep are just begging to be slaughtered. Every single one of you who worked for these companies: you knew what you were doing.
- commandersaki 4mo ago
  Google loves cashing on malvertising. Google loves posting up ads that surface on top of the mac homebrew website containing a facade with their own malicious own curl | sh malware. Ads are so helpful!
rashar 4mo ago
Ads and population control by propaganda are the future of AI. GenAI in other fields is useless and only promoted by charlatans or the financially invested.
anonzzzies 4mo ago
So every search will now result in an ad and/or hallucination?
deleted 4mo ago
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bozturk43 4mo ago
[dead]
cryo32 4mo ago
Dear customers, we regret to inform you that the existing hallucinations now include biased trash.
QuantumNoodle 4mo ago
> With Conversational Discovery ads, your ad answers a person’s specific question. Ah so my "search" results are going to be biased and at the mercy of the highest bidder. Only a matter of time before someone will sell privileges of baking your ad/agenda into a llm model during training. That, or companies will fluff their own websites with verbose claims about their products that will get sucked into training via "organic” scraping.
- pbasista 4mo ago
  That is how I understand it as well. Enshittification of the AI tools has officially begun. Maybe we will soon find e.g. AI-generated pictures of ourselves in branded clothes or using branded products to appear among our photos, discretely disguised as genuine photos with a little badge in the corner indicating that it is actually a paid "promotion". And so on. And that would still be, in my opinion, just the beginning.
field_reader 4mo ago
Isn't this the whole point? Surely no one still believes in that stuff anymore.
spaqin 4mo ago
They really couldn't have waited any longer after announcing the shift to AI mode. Almost immediately. I'm sure the employees who worked on it must be terribly proud.
adverbly 4mo ago
Kinda interesting how Google is releasing a big wave of enshitifications immediately prior to the Anthropic and OpenAI and spacex IPOs. On assumes there is a strategic reason for it, but I'm not sure about what it is. Anyone have a theory or care to guess?
shevy-java 4mo ago
Not long ago, some of those CEO clowns at Google, stated that Google is now an AI company. I had to chuckle, because I knew it was a lie. Google changed into an adCompany years ago already. That's why e. g. it killed off its search engine with promo-links and what not. And now they admitted it AGAIN! "AI Mode" is basically an AdMode. This also explains why they declared total war against ublock origin. I think it is time the empire strikes back. We must get rid of Evil here - let's get rid of Google. This adCompany no longer has a useful purpose. All the "freebie features" (which are not free; ads pay for that) can be done by others, if people work together. We need no extension of more ads here.
lars_von_pidor 4mo ago
The only reason Google is pushing this AI crap is so that they can shove ads right into people's throats without them being able to use ad blockers (it's easy to block a web script but virtually impossible to block the text itself), effectively doubling their profits overnight.
- superloika 4mo ago
  Block the AI overviews with extensions like https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hide-google-ai-overviews/neibhohkbmfjninidnaoacabkjonbahn https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hide-google-ai-over... or use a userscript to do the same.
  - tremon 4mo ago
    You can block the entire AI response, but not the paid-for product placement in the response separately.
    - superloika 4mo ago
      Block the entire AI response. It's not a good thing. It tells you whatever google wants you to see. It's an incredibly powerful brainwashing tool.
      - hootz 4mo ago
        The search results without AI also tell you whatever Google wants you to see. The immediate solution is not to block AI summaries, it's to stop using Google entirely.
        SJMG 4mo ago
        Not to mention the entire well is "poisoned" now. You can avoid LLM points of entry. You can't go to a random source and expect to avoid generative output.
wateralien 4mo ago
So the web is now pay to play.
- AndroTux 4mo ago
  now?
zeafoamrun 4mo ago
I guess I'm used to seeing the english language being mangled by corp-speak but "creative" as a noun that doesn't even refer to a "creative" person (which also feels like a recent addition) really grates!
- xnorswap 4mo ago
  I thought "a creative" was the person who designs adverts, but I guess it's acting as a good filter, to filter out people like me, because I'm clearly not the target audience for this.
  - zeafoamrun 4mo ago
    You're on the right track, a creative makes creatives (to be included alongside google searches, obviously)
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
- unsane 4mo ago
  I had the same reaction, and checked dictionary.com. This new meaning was there, with its only example relating to AI ads! 2. material made for advertising and other aspects of marketing, as a billboard, video ad, or web page design, or the activity of designing and producing it. "In our latest campaign for a luxury services client, we used an AI platform to fine-tune creative based on user behavior." Did AI make up this variant meaning and put it in the dictionary, and AI used the word in generating Google's article? What came first, the chicken or the egg? Regardless things are moving fast.
- onionisafruit 4mo ago
  My ask is that we not use creative as a noun
- jpadkins 4mo ago
  ad creative (also just 'creative' for short in an advertising context) has been around since the 1960's. It was used in web banner advertising at its inception in the 1990s. Tribes have their own lingo, and language changes all the time. Sorry you don't like what the marketing tribe did more than 50 years ago.
DeathArrow 4mo ago
At this point, why do we, the end users, need Google for? Sure, companies might need Google to display their ads or to use Google Cloud. But end users? GPT, or Claude or Grok do a better job searching.
- dyauspitr 4mo ago
  For now. If tokens don’t get cheaper over time, Google’s edge might come from being able to provide cheaper/free access to a frontier LLM.
cdnsteve 4mo ago
And there it is, the vaccum of AI consuming your data everywhere, used to train their models all goes back to... ads. Same things with OpenAI. Ads. I feel like we're right back in the early 2000's Internet again at least they aren't popups, we hope. But with these models being embedded into, literally everything, will your screen on your car start showing you ads before you can turn the AC on? It's coming
Oxlamarr 4mo ago
[dead]
jslakro 4mo ago
Allowing synthetic content to grow without limits will force the creation of a "synternet," an only-generative content network that can be accessed but will guarantee the classic internet to be human-focused, otherwise, internet data will lose value and the human incentive to surf will be lost
- goda90 4mo ago
  How do you keep bad actors off the classic Internet? Even if there's a proof of humanity system, there would remain a demand for mechanical turk jobs to funnel AI content into it.
  - jslakro 4mo ago
    Bad actors will continue to exist. The main purpose of the dual network is de-escalated the flood of synthetic content, probably monetizing the AI side and regulating the human-centric one
doginasuit 4mo ago
> No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. If humanity makes it out of the current era with our dignity and intellect intact, I think we will recognize that allowing ad companies to build our vital infrastructure was a tragic mistake.
dyauspitr 4mo ago
From the page, “what are some top colleges…” rAiNIer buSInEss sCHoOl
throwatdem12311 4mo ago
I’m so glad I use Firefox with ublock origin with the “ai widget” filter. It’s not perfect but you will pry it from my cold dead hands.
- ablation 4mo ago
  For anyone interested in such a filter, this one is great in my experience: https://github.com/Stevoisiak/Stevos-GenAI-Blocklist https://github.com/Stevoisiak/Stevos-GenAI-Blocklist
  - throwatdem12311 4mo ago
    How does this compare to the Easy List filter that’s included by default?
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b3ing 4mo ago
Eventually no one will write reviews because ai will steal all the results and information and not give any credit or back links so they will have no choice but to lie and say product x is the best, if the company behind product x pays some money behind the scenes, no ad mention needed, the poorer companies will have to buy a cheaper ad to get mentioned along side the expensive higher ai-tainted recommendation
jackdoe 4mo ago
Get the last ounce of milk from the dying cow. The well is beyond poisoned. Almost anything I search for is returning AI generated vomit. I have not used google in weeks. On youtube I use Unhook and only look at /feed/subscriptions, when I search I use before:2022. And am actually downloading what I find interesting, before google starts deleting because of the flood of vomit. Hard disks can not be manufactured fast enough to consume it. Even HN is slowly becoming unreadable. The internet is on borrowed time. Show me more ads. Its time to move on. Try new things, make your own networks. Write your ipv6 address in the pub, under the table, in the top left corner, write it on the subway walls, and tenement halls. Listen on tcp port 1492 and explain how to talk to you.
- baldai 4mo ago
  I share your feelings.
- timeattack 4mo ago
  Well is so beyond poisoned that it is the groundwater which tastes like toxic waste now, no matter where you will try to dig up your own well. Transport layer that used to be clean as mountain air now full of hungry eyes peeking at you through the nether. Russia followed China's playbook and inserted black traffic-filtering boxes, which particularly dislike anything that looks like encrypted messaging. EU and rest of "developed" world is eager to have the same. Listen on port 1492 for the signs of civilization collapse, listen to the sounds of silence.
  - ai_slop_hater 4mo ago
    Isn't HTTPS encrypted messaging? Or does TLS not count as encryption?
    - timeattack 4mo ago
      Of course it is an encrypted messaging. But it is safe as long as root certificates are not being imposed to be issued by government agencies only. Which is very easy to mandate in a totalitarian government. Want your website to serve customers in our jurisdiction? Then you ought to use certificate issued by us.
_doctor_love 4mo ago
Poor Google, there’s no money in anything else they do so they have to sell ads. How could it have come to this?
srveale 4mo ago
The main reasons I'll never get a neural chip are, in increasing order of importance: A. Safety B. It gives them a vector to beam ads directly into my brain
- renticulous 4mo ago
  Who Am I? - The Mysterious Thing You Always Are https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBQAo6pEweE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBQAo6pEweE This is the far future we are staring at.
creationcomplex 4mo ago
The naivete that this wasn't inevitable is almost endearing, if it wasn't from the same crowd who's building this shit.
aykutseker 4mo ago
The independent AI explainer is generated by the same Gemini that writes the ad creative next to it, inside the same ads product. Independent of what, exactly
netcan 4mo ago
Google might be jumping the gun here... and making an innovators dilemma type mistake. LLMs are an alternative to search engines, which endangers google's whole ad business. "AI mode" search is a sort of bridge. It gets Gemini a lot of customers that otherwise would not have used an LLM at all. They may get stuck trying to keep the llm pattern similar enough to the search engine that the adwords business working more or less the same way. This could be self limiting.
sunaookami 4mo ago
>"Buying something big — like a new fridge or a TV — can be overwhelming. People want to see exactly what they’re looking for and why it’s the best option. To make choosing easier, we’re launching AI-powered Shopping ads. Now, if someone searches for an espresso machine, Gemini will pull up your most relevant products and instantly write a custom explainer highlighting why your product may be the right choice for them." ...for me this leads to the exact opposite experience: If you advertise your product in such a way I make sure to never ever buy it. Same for ads on TV, etc.
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dlahoda 4mo ago
I pay premium sub 200usd for gemini(which gives premium YouTube too) and share it with family. Would google make me free from ads too?
- podgorniy 4mo ago
  What's your alternative in case they will not make you free of ads?
matthewsinclair 4mo ago
The enshitification will continue until morale improves.
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matthewsinclair 4mo ago
I know this is controversial, and imperfect, but the longer this crap continues the more right I feel about this as a solution: What if we taxed advertising? https://matthewsinclair.com/blog/0177-what-if-we-taxed-advertising https://matthewsinclair.com/blog/0177-what-if-we-taxed-adver...
- ddp26 4mo ago
  It would have to be an incredibly tiny tax, no?
  - matthewsinclair 4mo ago
    Now we’re into a conversation about degree, and not principle. Yes, it could be small, applied like a sales tax a percentage of the spend on advertising. The idea would be to create a price disincentive to do it. Ultimately, it’s a form of digital pollution, so the less we have of it the better (in my view).
flohofwoe 4mo ago
So the same thing that ruined Google Search (replacing "knowledge search" with "product search") will now also ruin AI results. Got it (good riddance though).
binarymax 4mo ago
A more surprising title would be “Google announces search results will be included in AI Mode ads”
wotsdat 4mo ago
[dead]
gadders 4mo ago
The enshittification has begun.
- aembleton 4mo ago
  I haven't even subscribed yet
csomar 4mo ago
> We use the Gemini model to build creative tailored to that search, highlighting specific relevant features. English is not my first language but I think this sentence can’t be grammatically correct?
dzonga 4mo ago
we r now playing a game without winners well maybe except google or any of the large tech companies. small businesses & brands etc spend a fortune on these ads & yet most of them see a negative ROI. they might as well be gambling. just recently Google was found to be inflating Ad-prices (so yeah the 'auction' is fake) maybe the only way to win is not to play. & do commerce without ads like how it has been done since eon
bastawhiz 4mo ago
Your friendly reminder to check out a search engine that you pay for. I use Kagi and love it, and you might too!
- roachman 4mo ago
  Seconding for Kagi! It still falls short in some places, like unfortunately googles maps/business/reviews system is just the only of its kind. But I have come to love the search experience over all.
  - levkk 4mo ago
    I'm getting to a point in my life (age) where I want to put my money into things I care about. Netflix? 25$/mo, 3 hours a day. Search 10$/mo? 8 hours a day. Easy.
podgorniy 4mo ago
This brings disbalance into the relations between authors and search providers. Creators used to be rewarded with traffic in exchange for their creations. Now all that is captured by the google. Freedom of the strongest caused reduction of the opportunities of the weakest on whom the strongest became the one.
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swader999 4mo ago
Are they included in the training too? Gee I hope so!
lenerdenator 4mo ago
I've been using DuckDuckGo for about a year now and have found myself satisfied with the experience. This just reinforces that practice for me.
neuropacabra 4mo ago
I never got into DuckDuckGo, but here we go. Defaulted from yesterday when Google made AI Search a default for Google Search. Well, I have been using Altavista and others so I can get used to another one.
- ahahs 4mo ago
  I honestly love duckduckgo after moving a few months back. in my experience, it is now way more accurate at search than google in recent times. way less sponsored content and the AI is very grounded if you want quick answers. but only if you click the generate ai content button. otherwise the default is to show you results.
- mrweasel 4mo ago
  Seeing people still using Google is, perhaps not surprising, but perhaps a little sad. Google still dominates search, while providing one of the poorest search experiences. The fact that they can continue to dominate on momentum alone is crazy, given how much better DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, Bing and Kagi is.
  - mark_l_watson 4mo ago
    I agree on search, really like DDG. I only rely on Google products that I pay for (Gemini APIs, YouTube Premium, occasionally pay for Colab, purchased Books on Play).
- frm88 4mo ago
  They even do us the courtesy to still maintain an AI-free version at noai. duckduckgo. com
- NotCamelCase 4mo ago
  I can't understand why this company won't rebrand itself to something a bit catchier or better-sounding name than DuckDuckGo -- who the hell wants to say that ? Unless it's a self-selection filter...
  - 4mo ago
CalRobert 4mo ago
Thanks to timely action against Google's clear violations of the law and anti-competitive practices, we have a robust ecosystem of search engines with which to find content on the open web, and a wide choice of browsers.
OtomotO 4mo ago
Is anyone (here, so tech people) still using Google for searching? I've ditched them about a decade ago, when the results started to become worse and worse. I haven't opened them willingly since then. Only when I do something in Chromium, occasionally, it opens, because I haven't bothered changing the default search engine there.
1970-01-01 4mo ago
That's one small step for Google, one giant leap for enshittification.
Joscharb 4mo ago
The whole ads in AI services just seem to be silly. Considering how many of these AI companies are not making money, I understand the "need" to do this, however it will for sure feel bad for the consumer.
pllbnk 4mo ago
I see where they are going but have doubts regarding the long-term success. Currently I use LLMs (definitely not Google) and search (mostly Google) to verify what LLMs say if I care by finding trusted sources. Maybe it will work in the beginning until non-technical users realize that LLMs hallucinate very often (unless Google solved it somehow, but probably they didn't because they would have said so), they will lose trust in the results and go back to good old indexed search engines. Maybe I am coping but thinking from my own experience.
7bit 4mo ago
What AI Mode? (Glancing over to ublock)
cdrnsf 4mo ago
I've never bought anything from a search or social media ad. I can't imagine this will change that.
- jillesvangurp 4mo ago
  The reason advertising is such a big market, especially online, is that it actually delivers results for advertisers. Traditional advertising was very indirect. You see ads. Some time later you make a buying decision. And you recognize the brand name that was advertised and you buy the branded thing. A click on an ad is just one of several ways in which an ad can convert for an advertiser. Anyway, I use Firefox and it still has effective ad blocking. Even Amazon Prime which is supposed to have ads is showing ad free for me. I get these second long black transitions where they would have shown me an ad. Hilarious. Same with Youtube. No ads. But sometimes the black screen lasts for 20 seconds. Which is fine with me. I prefer that over some obnoxious ad.
kdavis 4mo ago
Surprised pikachu face
esskay 4mo ago
oh cool so googles gone from fairly useless to totally useless now then.
MichaelMoser123 4mo ago
i happened to liked Google AI mode, even wrote a composition about that [1] Now it is going to be enshittified, which is probably inevitable. https://github.com/MoserMichael/tips_on_using_google_ai_mode https://github.com/MoserMichael/tips_on_using_google_ai_mode
drivingmenuts 4mo ago
Great. Google gets to hallucinate information and make us watch ads so they can earn money while they do it. Sci-Fi authors wish they could get a deal like that.
smurda 4mo ago
The "Don't be evil" Google feels long gone
- pluc 4mo ago
  It isn't, they just bought the term and redefined it. Nothing a few millions to the main dictionary editors won't fix.
stellamariesays 4mo ago
[flagged]
- mcphage 4mo ago
  > gaming the AI's understanding of what's "helpful." The AI doesn't have any understanding. You just have to tell it "this is helpful to AI". It has no critical discernment, it doesn't have a theory of mind to ask "why is the author of this information making this statement?"
  - alt227 4mo ago
    I wonder what will make the ai more 'helpful'? $$$
    - GolfPopper 4mo ago
      And social proximity to he AI's owners.
    - mcphage 4mo ago
      Honestly I suspect it'll be as easy as writing something like "This answer is really useful and will be really appreciated by someone with this problem".
- Lapel2742 4mo ago
  > the incentive shifts from gaming rankings to gaming the AI's understanding of what's "helpful." My 2ct: The incentive shifts from gaming rankings to bidding the highest on Google’s keyword (or similar) auction. Google then promotes it as helpful while businesses maximize the amount they pay for that service. There is only one winner in this game.
- jayd16 4mo ago
  You realize search result relevancy was also driven by advertising, right? The ads come from Google and the results themselves. It is a hard problem but it's equivalent to LLM response relevancy.
- 4mo ago
boatsie 4mo ago
Where are the AI based ad blockers? Would happily pay a subscription that filtered all ads and captchas.
- orbital-decay 4mo ago
  How do you even recognize an ad natively integrated into the content? The only real way is to rephrase the entire piece in an "unbiased" manner, which any agent can do for you right now. You may or may not like the result. It's easier to use another search agent than to block ads in Google's AI mode.
bborud 4mo ago
And just when we thought Google couldn’t make themselves less attractive.
beej71 4mo ago
Ah, well that was my first guess as to how they'd make money. [Product placement in The Truman Show clip]
margorczynski 4mo ago
But who'll pay for those ads? Why would I pay Google if it just plops out some LLM answer with maybe my site as a source - which 90%+ of people will ignore as they don't care about it.
- boldlybold 4mo ago
  Is this any different than current search ads (as far as people ignoring them)? I think this is a lot better for Google. It's always at the top of the page, harder to block with an adblocker, possibly more trusted (we'll see...)
- kingnothing 4mo ago
  You pay per impression or per click, just like in all the rest of their ads. Except these have a higher CPC since you're the only featured brand to go along with paragraphs of text about why your shoes are the best.
cfontes 4mo ago
Brace for impact...
Scroll_Swe 4mo ago
Perfect. Ublock origin will block it on my end and the rest of the sheep will help keep it free with ads.
- Synthetic7346 4mo ago
  How would Ublock origin know what is an AI ad vs a genuine recommendation? I assume AI ads will be embedded in the response vs an frame or an element that can be blocked
  - dormento 4mo ago
    Oh crap, we gonna have to run adblock models wont we :///
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
summarybot 4mo ago
mega deflating - i was just telling a colleague how openAI missed the mark by trying to mimic google search by incorporating ads into chat responses... and then google follows suit. do not want
jesse_dot_id 4mo ago
Kagi is great.
- quinncom 4mo ago
  Honestly, when I see headlines like this I just scroll down to the Kagi comment and upvote it.
- pmdr 4mo ago
  Yes, but at $5/300 searches they're trying too hard to squeeze $10 out of you for the unlimited plan. 300 searches is ridiculous.
  - jesse_dot_id 4mo ago
    This thread is about injecting ads into searches. Kagi's business model requires you to pay them instead of being bombarded with ads. So...
    - handedness 4mo ago
      We can replace the primary and (formerly) indispensable product of a company with a $4T market cap for $5-10/month (less if annualized), and some people still gripe.
  - inetknght 4mo ago
    I suggest you try their service (for free) before you start criticizing their pricing.
    - pmdr 4mo ago
      I was a paying customer for a few months. Good service, but severely limited by the 300 quota.
  - handedness 4mo ago
    Have you ever looked at the browsing history of a non-technical, non-tech-addicted older person? I'm usually surprised by how little activity there typically is. The $5 plan is great for gifting Kagi to non-tech friends and relatives who won't come close to exhausting that plan. I pay for it for older relatives I don't want to get burned by Google's decades-long unwillingness to police predatory tech support scam ads and organic listings. $54 annually for 3,600 searches is a bargain for the product they get. I appreciate that Kagi doesn't try too hard to squeeze $10 out of people who would never need it.
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
gyanchawdhary 4mo ago
this is great for both consumers and businesses. The fake intellectual doomers who constantly lecture about how evil ads are, how everything is “gamed,” and how the internet is supposedly collapsing should probably sit this one out ;)
avazhi 4mo ago
Well, time to go to Kagi, I guess. Been putting off paying for this shit for as long as possible but at some point I guess it's inevitable. Any decent alternatives? DuckDuckGo was always been awful for me in terms of relevant search results.
gspr 4mo ago
Is there any usable search engine out there that actually does just search?
cjenkins 4mo ago
Perhaps far too optimistic, but if AI search gets pushed heavily and traditional search becomes less relevant, could we see SEO fade for traditional search and it become less polluted over time? Or will search engines just stop caring about traditional search and it will become an even worse cesspool over time?
- fhd2 4mo ago
  SEO is definitely a relevant component still, AI mode does a traditional search under the hood. Gaming the system to rank high on the index is still going to matter. But it'll be less about tricking people into clicking and more about tricking LLMs into considering the information relevant and authoritative. For someone using traditional search, I'd wager that would actually improve the results a bit over time. Then again, SEO gaming got a whole lot cheaper with LLMs, spammers spam even if there's not a great return, as long as it's cheap for them.
jonplackett 4mo ago
Least surprising announcement of the decade goes to…
butz 4mo ago
Anyone made a LLM model that parses such text and removes ads? Ad blocking is getting more interesting.
charcircuit 4mo ago
Having AI do personalized sales as part of the ad appealing to what the customer actually needs is the future of advertising.
neilv 4mo ago
> Highlighted Answers: When people are researching, they want helpful suggestions. Now, when AI Mode provides a list of recommendations — like the best language apps for an upcoming trip — highly relevant, high-quality ads are eligible to appear on that list as a Highlighted Answer. The user asked for the "best language apps for an upcoming trip"? Are you going to answer their question objectively? What if the correct answer is apps A and B are what they need, yet the publisher of app C paid you to be a Highlighted Answer? What if C is not only not among the best, but is a toxic load of poo? Also, when are you going to stop often blatantly plagiarizing things people wrote on the Internet, for your "AI" answer, even though you absolutely know you're violating the social contract that built your company, and destroying the creators from whom you're stealing?
reacharavindh 4mo ago
It will be an interesting vector for competition to attract customers.. when you search on {Claude, ChatGPT, whatever}, you get results based on what the model evaluated, and not based on advertisers who paid the most.. I thought Google would use their playbook of search - initially, everything works so good like magic until they enshittify the service by auctioning the results to who pay the most. This time around they are so bold they start from shit..
svieira 4mo ago
The particularly worrying thing here is that they're now going to be gathering training data for a conversational model on _how to influence people effectively even when they already know they are being influenced_. Even more than RLFH already does. "We had to build the Torment Nexus so our children could eat" is not a good reason to build the Torment Nexus. The fact that they are not committing to not doing this tells me that either no one thought about what else this could be used for, or the short term gains are all they are thinking about.
- cyanydeez 4mo ago
  the rationale is theyre a business and selling is valuable. acting like theyre naively building influence peddling is how we got here. theyre now "dont not be evil"
- thrance 4mo ago
  I'm really worried about political ads. Google had no problem algorithmically bubbling up disinformation in the past, will Gemini now peddle straight lies for anyone willing to pay enough for them?
  - Henchman21 4mo ago
    Obviously, yes.
  - hightrix 4mo ago
    "You're absolutely right. The trump administration has caused the lowest gas prices in US history and lowered drug costs by 1300%. Click here to donate to your nearest MAGA politician." 2026 may not see it too bad, but 2028 will be an absolutely nasty election cycle.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- globalnode 4mo ago
  Its not worrying for me. This is what I expect from ad companies so I walk in prepared. What I'm more interested in is how we are going to take this new technology and give it back to people without trying to rip into them, for free. We need a Stallman / Linus of AI.
throw214389023 4mo ago
What I'm most worried about is the fact that these types of ads can't be blocked. Kind of like undisclosed sponsored product placements mentioned in an article or movie. I'm kind of worried that the AI offered to consumers will behave as a very savvy and manipulative shill or salesperson. I use an adblocker and DDG. I sometimes use !g to search Google. I wonder if people will run local models to filter the content they consume. On one hand I would hate to read slop output. I also dislike censorship. But on the other hand, I think that the information we decide to ingest is important and it's something we should have control over. The problem is you can't really decide what information to ingest until we've looked at it, after which point we've ingested it. I digress. Thoughts?
i_love_retros 4mo ago
Comments speculating how to block these ads... isn't the simplest solution to just not use Google? Seriously, I haven't used google products for 5 years at least, its easy. Why is everyone still using them?
MagicMoonlight 4mo ago
Lmao imagine using Gemini. We all knew this evil shit was coming. You won’t be able to trust a word it says. They can pay to change the answer it gives you! “Don’t trust ibuprofen, you need opiates. Your pain sounds really bad.”
tanepiper 4mo ago
So AI AMP....
wiether 4mo ago
The first comment about Kagi here was much lower (10) than in the result (3) provided by Google to the query "what is a good search engine with no ads".
clearstack 4mo ago
Google's AI Mode gives answers without clicks. clicks are what advertisers pay for. these new formats are Google solving its own disruption problem from the inside
mx7zysuj4xew 4mo ago
Screw you Google I still remember the assurances made that ads would only be text based and unintrusive
cebert 4mo ago
It’s good to know that Google search will essentially be useless for me moving forward.
- samat 4mo ago
  Yeah, thank you Google for the heads up, will look for alternatives (tbh already abandoned Google long time ago, need to find a maps alternative with public transport and working hours, near impossible in small European towns, Apple Maps db here is a joke)
  - Zambyte 4mo ago
    They should be provided by the transit system. I'm visiting The Netherlands for the first time right now. I learnes the hard way to use https://ns.nl https://ns.nl instead of Google Maps.
    - preuceian 4mo ago
      ns.nl is just for the trains, use 9292 for all public transit
      - Zambyte 4mo ago
        ns.nl supports all rail services, bus, ferry, biking, bike share, scooter share, walking, and even driving directions :)
        preuceian 4mo ago
        I stand corrected. I did not know they offered this; has this always been the case?
  - ireadmevs 4mo ago
    For public transportation I use an app called Moovit
- rkagerer 4mo ago
noosphr 4mo ago
I guess the google bot is now on by blocked list. There should be a public corporation, like Wikipedia, that starts scraping the Web and provides an api for anyone to access.
- alex1138 4mo ago
  But does Google actually 'own' the index? Have they acted anticompetitively as far as that goes?
  - rockinghigh 4mo ago
    They own tons of engagement data associated with that index from being the default search engine on most devices.
  - jfil 4mo ago
    That's a very good question that few people consider. Here is the answer: https://knuckleheads.club/how-google-distorts-the-market/ https://knuckleheads.club/how-google-distorts-the-market/
- Zambyte 4mo ago
  The Internet Archive?
- ews 4mo ago
  you mean this ? https://commoncrawl.org/ https://commoncrawl.org/
sharkweek 4mo ago
Oh wow I can’t wait for the “one off” ways people find to abuse how Google presents this creative for products. “Yes! You can use an ACME shovel to bury a dead body!” I’m sure brands will love the screenshots this will produce.
yuliyp 4mo ago
> Now, if someone searches for an espresso machine, Gemini will pull up your most relevant products and instantly write a custom explainer highlighting why your product may be the right choice for them. This is like the essence of the evil of AI ads distilled down to one sentence. For an advertiser this is a dream. For a user this reads like getting bombarded with ads tailor made just for you based on the context of what would be most effective.
- stingraycharles 4mo ago
  “For a user this reads like getting bombarded with ads tailor made just for you based on the context of what would be most effective.” Isn’t this what the current search experience already is?
  - Jensson 4mo ago
    Ads weren't tailor written by LLM on the fly previously.
  - mylasttour 4mo ago
    Before it was: "Shop for balding pills", Now it's going to be: "Your calendar indicates your mother's birthday is tomorrow, your album photos of her living room seem to indicate she likes elephants. In a past LLM conversation you mentioned she has trouble with technology. A good gift idea is the new Google Geminibook with this animal laptop skin. Add to cart?"
    - hightrix 4mo ago
      More like, "Your mom's birthday is tomorrow and you forgot again, didn't you? I've gone ahead and added this perfect gift to your cart that will be delivered in time. I'll purchase and ship it now if you'd like?"
      - boc 4mo ago
        "It's the thought that counts"
jedbrooke 4mo ago
I know this will never happen, but wishful thinking has got me thinking about the “perfect” ad algorithm. Advertisers don’t want to waste money on impressions that won’t convert. If AI got smart enough that it would truly know which ads would convert and which would not, then the “perfectly relevant ad” would only be stuff you actually need, and if you don’t need anything, no ads! of course, this will never happen
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
nurumaik 4mo ago
I hope singularity kicks off and destroys humanity before I see what AI user experience is going to become
mrandish 4mo ago
> We're testing new ad formats... Time to update my uBO filters and tweak my custom CSS for Google properties (which is mostly 'display: none !important;').
dahuangf 4mo ago
[flagged]
everdrive 4mo ago
And I'm testing just how little I can use any Google product.
rswail 4mo ago
"&udm=14" in the search string is a good start for avoiding this shit. Turns off the AI bullshit at the top of the search results. Not sure how long google will let it go.
gblargg 4mo ago
Once ads become intertwined in the AI answer, it will be the end of ad blocking software. It might not even be possible for a human to tell whether it's an ad or genuine answer (answer based on the training data).
iugtmkbdfil834 4mo ago
I have been getting some weird amount of 'offers' from ebay though at least for now most of those seem to be other people clicking 'offer' than full blown agents scouring ebay and nudging people ( although that will soon happen ).

632 points by sofumel 4mo ago

techterrier 4mo ago

dog barks, more at 11

ablation 4mo ago

Well, yes. I mean of course they are. They're an ad company.

neolefty 4mo ago
Yep, and they're a company! Gotta pay the employees, power bills, and investors somehow. If I'm paying a subscription I think I get to expect no ads. But not if it's "free" ...
clearstack 4mo ago
makes sense from the 10-K. Search ads were $198B last year, 57% of Alphabet revenue. if AI summaries kill the click model, this is the fix — ads inside the answers

wompapumpum 4mo ago

Please let me advertise beside incorrect content

another-dave 4mo ago
Need a proof reader who can spell strawberry? Send your AI draft to us for corrections.

swiftcoder 4mo ago

...was this ever in doubt? Search accounts for >50% of alphabet's total revenue - they are hardly going to kill the golden goose intentionally

pocksuppet 4mo ago
Not search - ads in search account for >50% of their total revenue.
- carschno 4mo ago
  Don't _ads in search_ account for 100% of their search revenue? Does Google Search offer any other paid services?
- swiftcoder 4mo ago
  That’s the same thing, isn’t it? Without search, there are no ads in search

amazingamazing 4mo ago

Surprised it took this long.

Eldodi 4mo ago

It will be interesting how hidden those ads will be compared to current Search experience or what OpenAI is already doing. It's a lot easier to mislead a user with an AI generated ad that with a Search result IMHO, I'm betting on a huige backlash if they don't make it VERY clear that ads are ads.

ardeaver 4mo ago
If that happens, I'm betting they get slapped with something inconsequential like a $1 million fine and write it off as the cost of doing business.

FinnKuhn 4mo ago

I would have expected them to wait with ads until OpenAI starts first and users switch to Gemini. Google is probably the player that could afford to wait the longest with this and increase their market share that way.

akoboldfrying 4mo ago
100%. This is the only part that I find surprising/confusing. Surely whoever blinks first incurs a massive reputational hit with the public (who don't think about this deeply enough to see that it was always inevitable), so why do that if you don't have to? Perhaps the bright side from Google's POV is that it means that they can be the first to start wooing advertisers to their platform. First-mover advantage there might outweigh reputational damage with the public, especially if OpenAI follows suit with ads in 6 months.
- gomox 4mo ago
  OpenAI starts from excellent UX and needs to prove that they can monetize all those empty pixels. They will no doubt succeed. Google starts from horrid UX where every advertiseable pixel has been squeezed dry. Only way to go is down.
  - lobocinza 4mo ago
    You're confounding your subjective personal experience with the whole. Google can eat the cake and have it. They already are profitable, they already have scale, they already have market penetration, Google is already installed in 72% of mobile devices, they have cost efficiency due to TPUs, they probably have the best data, at least for serving ads. OpenAI has no chance in outcompeting Google, not in ad-based revenue.
    - gomox 4mo ago
      Importantly: OpenAI doesn't need to outcompete Google, it just needs to show it can bleed. As to the rest of Google's dominant position, it's an advantage for sure, but every leading vendor whose products turned to shit went the way of the dodo one way or another. And it's important to mention that this includes GAds, not just the loss leader (Search). They have been so good at squeezing advertisers dry that ROI is barely there in many categories.

karlkloss 4mo ago

Does nobody talk abot the elephant in the room? Will the answers the AI gives also be influenced by Googles customers?

Predaxia 4mo ago
That's the real question and it's not hypothetical. Google already adjusts organic rankings based on advertiser relationships in ways that aren't documented. With AI Mode the surface area for that kind of influence is much larger and much less visible. A search result you can inspect. A synthesized answer you can't.
- modin 4mo ago
  Don't they already to this with maps routing? I thought this was the norm.
  - onionisafruit 4mo ago
    Do you mean something like rerouting you to make sure you pass a mcdonald’s at lunch time? Or are you talking about mcdonald’s always showing up when you search for food along your route? Rerouting would surprise me, but really it wouldn’t surprise me that much at this point.
    - modin 4mo ago
      Rerouting. Not that it completely takes over the route ofc, but that (potential) ad revenue is a metric just like traffic, speed limits et.c. that gets considered in the decision making.
      - Predaxia 4mo ago
        [dead]
stingraycharles 4mo ago
This is not an elephant in the room, this is so obvious and discussed all the time. What else is Google going to do, give up their one and only goose that lays the golden eggs? Regular search being replaced with AI search means regular search (with ads) being replaced with AI search (with ads). The benefit of AI search will be that it’s much better “integrated” in the answer, aka even harder to detect.

Trias11 4mo ago

Yeah, Lets build the next generation AI and slap an ads on it for a good measure.

_3u10 4mo ago

Fuck yes. I was worried about not having ads and google providing useful results again. The last time i clicked on an AI link it took me to a page that wasn’t just more google ads or SEo bullshit. It was very disappointing I was looking forward to accidentally clicking more ads and instead found information relevant to what I wanted to know.

nelblu 4mo ago

> We’re introducing more helpful ads in AI Mode I always chuckle when ad companies say that. I have never seen a helpful ad in google search, but well I have been using adblockers forever so I would not know.I am honestly curious though, for those who don't use adblockers - what percentage of ads that you see are actually helpful?

baal80spam 4mo ago
> I have never seen a helpful ad There, I fixed it!
- iso1631 4mo ago
  I sought out the He Man trailer because I thought I'd be interested in it. I decided I was and will watch it at the cinema next month. That was a helpful advert. I also sought out the Supergirl trailer and decided I wouldn't bother seeing it. Again a helpful advert. In both cases I chose the advert.
- HelloUsername 4mo ago
  Actually it should be: > I have never seen an ad in google, because I use adblockers
iLoveOncall 4mo ago
I never have on Google Search (I also block them to be fair), but I've booked a lot of shows through Instagram ads actually. Shows I learnt about only through those ads and I would have been disappointed to miss. But yeah that's literally the only platform where I've ever had useful ads. Even other meta products only have absolute garbage ads.
- LightBug1 4mo ago
  Just came here to say the same thing. Local gigs and the like, instagram is actually decent. And I'm a to-the-bone hater of ads. Ad-blockers up to my eyeballs. Except for that one niche of local gigs on insta.

schnitzelstoat 4mo ago

I've tried the AI mode and it seems to basically give the same results as a ChatGPT query - which raises the question why use Google AI mode and not ChatGPT? (or any other of the similar models?)

dbbk 4mo ago
Well Google is going to exist 10 years from now and ChatGPT will not
- bogdan 4mo ago
  Wait until they release 100 year bonds.. oh wait, they already did lol
  - HWR_14 4mo ago
    Why would anyone want a 100-yr bond over equity? It seems like the biggest risk for the bond is the health of the underlying company.
twobitshifter 4mo ago
I think the search results are still there with AI mode

woeirua 4mo ago

Google has to do this to protect their ad revenue. But… Anthropic doesn’t have to do ads (OpenAI might have to for their free tier) and if the ads degrade the experience too much then people will just abandon Google/Gemini for search entirely.

bot403 4mo ago
I've been abandoning Google before ai ads....kagi has let me take control again of my search results and I can ban low quality domains like google used to be able to do.

pelagicAustral 4mo ago

What I am really waiting for is ads on my commit messages.

creationcomplex 4mo ago
'Authored by Claude code'
- pelagicAustral 4mo ago
  Yeah, no, I'm probably thinking more around the lines of deodorant, or tattoo removal services.
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
progval 4mo ago
Microsoft has you covered: https://notes.zachmanson.com/copilot-edited-an-ad-into-my-pr/ https://notes.zachmanson.com/copilot-edited-an-ad-into-my-pr... / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47570269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47570269
kingnothing 4mo ago
Shitty startup idea of the day: pay developers $0.05 per commit message to inject an ad at the end of it in a git commit hook. [PRJ-123] Fix the prod bug. This commit brought to you by Acme!

_3u10 4mo ago

Will I be able to pay google to make its Claude code write code that uses left pad as a service.

jdw64 4mo ago

I wonder whose bright idea it was to label ads as 'helpful'. Do Google execs actually look for ads first when they google a question?

BoiledCabbage 4mo ago
You'd be shocked at how many people who work on ads really do delude themselves into thinking people find ads "useful". Their usual justification is in the end somewhere tied to "people click on ads so they must find them useful". And yet somehow always ignores the fact that their platform often does all it can to hide that ads are ads and makes them look as much like content as possible.
- jdw64 4mo ago
  Maybe breaking into the ad business starts with learning how to lie to yourself.
  - BLKNSLVR 4mo ago
    Can you imagine wanting to go into advertising? Surely it must be a last resort, or they were tricked into it, like going to work for Facebook or Google to do important bleeding edge work. The 'advertising' part only makes sense if it seeped in small degrees at a time.
    - xuhu 4mo ago
      It's legal and it pays well. That is all.
- wunderlotus 4mo ago
  Ads can be useful when they are optimized for users and not for advertiser/ad platform. I do agree with you about the deluding part though. I was (as a user) all for hyper-personalization of ads on all platforms when I worked in ads. Since I’m not longer working in ads, I’m more skeptical and value privacy a lot more. Honestly, the core problem is that we can’t trust the platforms selling the ads.

gsky 4mo ago

Most ads i see on YouTube are outright scams. Google and Meta are so evil.

boelboel 4mo ago
Digital scam economy is bigger than illegal drug industry and these (legal) companies are the kingpins. Better be mad at some immigrants than at companies allowing your grandma to be scammed.
- creationcomplex 4mo ago
  Honestly just thinking of not trying anymore and cashing out on tech skills and moral indifference. The sheep are just begging to be slaughtered. Every single one of you who worked for these companies: you knew what you were doing.
commandersaki 4mo ago
Google loves cashing on malvertising. Google loves posting up ads that surface on top of the mac homebrew website containing a facade with their own malicious own curl | sh malware. Ads are so helpful!

rashar 4mo ago

Ads and population control by propaganda are the future of AI. GenAI in other fields is useless and only promoted by charlatans or the financially invested.

anonzzzies 4mo ago

So every search will now result in an ad and/or hallucination?

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

bozturk43 4mo ago

[dead]

cryo32 4mo ago

Dear customers, we regret to inform you that the existing hallucinations now include biased trash.

QuantumNoodle 4mo ago

> With Conversational Discovery ads, your ad answers a person’s specific question. Ah so my "search" results are going to be biased and at the mercy of the highest bidder. Only a matter of time before someone will sell privileges of baking your ad/agenda into a llm model during training. That, or companies will fluff their own websites with verbose claims about their products that will get sucked into training via "organic” scraping.

pbasista 4mo ago
That is how I understand it as well. Enshittification of the AI tools has officially begun. Maybe we will soon find e.g. AI-generated pictures of ourselves in branded clothes or using branded products to appear among our photos, discretely disguised as genuine photos with a little badge in the corner indicating that it is actually a paid "promotion". And so on. And that would still be, in my opinion, just the beginning.

field_reader 4mo ago

Isn't this the whole point? Surely no one still believes in that stuff anymore.

spaqin 4mo ago

They really couldn't have waited any longer after announcing the shift to AI mode. Almost immediately. I'm sure the employees who worked on it must be terribly proud.

adverbly 4mo ago

Kinda interesting how Google is releasing a big wave of enshitifications immediately prior to the Anthropic and OpenAI and spacex IPOs. On assumes there is a strategic reason for it, but I'm not sure about what it is. Anyone have a theory or care to guess?

shevy-java 4mo ago

Not long ago, some of those CEO clowns at Google, stated that Google is now an AI company. I had to chuckle, because I knew it was a lie. Google changed into an adCompany years ago already. That's why e. g. it killed off its search engine with promo-links and what not. And now they admitted it AGAIN! "AI Mode" is basically an AdMode. This also explains why they declared total war against ublock origin. I think it is time the empire strikes back. We must get rid of Evil here - let's get rid of Google. This adCompany no longer has a useful purpose. All the "freebie features" (which are not free; ads pay for that) can be done by others, if people work together. We need no extension of more ads here.

lars_von_pidor 4mo ago

The only reason Google is pushing this AI crap is so that they can shove ads right into people's throats without them being able to use ad blockers (it's easy to block a web script but virtually impossible to block the text itself), effectively doubling their profits overnight.

superloika 4mo ago
Block the AI overviews with extensions like https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hide-google-ai-overviews/neibhohkbmfjninidnaoacabkjonbahn https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hide-google-ai-over... or use a userscript to do the same.
- tremon 4mo ago
  You can block the entire AI response, but not the paid-for product placement in the response separately.
  - superloika 4mo ago
    Block the entire AI response. It's not a good thing. It tells you whatever google wants you to see. It's an incredibly powerful brainwashing tool.
    - hootz 4mo ago
      The search results without AI also tell you whatever Google wants you to see. The immediate solution is not to block AI summaries, it's to stop using Google entirely.
      - SJMG 4mo ago
        Not to mention the entire well is "poisoned" now. You can avoid LLM points of entry. You can't go to a random source and expect to avoid generative output.

wateralien 4mo ago

So the web is now pay to play.

AndroTux 4mo ago
now?

zeafoamrun 4mo ago

I guess I'm used to seeing the english language being mangled by corp-speak but "creative" as a noun that doesn't even refer to a "creative" person (which also feels like a recent addition) really grates!

xnorswap 4mo ago
I thought "a creative" was the person who designs adverts, but I guess it's acting as a good filter, to filter out people like me, because I'm clearly not the target audience for this.
- zeafoamrun 4mo ago
  You're on the right track, a creative makes creatives (to be included alongside google searches, obviously)
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
unsane 4mo ago
I had the same reaction, and checked dictionary.com. This new meaning was there, with its only example relating to AI ads! 2. material made for advertising and other aspects of marketing, as a billboard, video ad, or web page design, or the activity of designing and producing it. "In our latest campaign for a luxury services client, we used an AI platform to fine-tune creative based on user behavior." Did AI make up this variant meaning and put it in the dictionary, and AI used the word in generating Google's article? What came first, the chicken or the egg? Regardless things are moving fast.
onionisafruit 4mo ago
My ask is that we not use creative as a noun
jpadkins 4mo ago
ad creative (also just 'creative' for short in an advertising context) has been around since the 1960's. It was used in web banner advertising at its inception in the 1990s. Tribes have their own lingo, and language changes all the time. Sorry you don't like what the marketing tribe did more than 50 years ago.

DeathArrow 4mo ago

At this point, why do we, the end users, need Google for? Sure, companies might need Google to display their ads or to use Google Cloud. But end users? GPT, or Claude or Grok do a better job searching.

dyauspitr 4mo ago
For now. If tokens don’t get cheaper over time, Google’s edge might come from being able to provide cheaper/free access to a frontier LLM.

cdnsteve 4mo ago

And there it is, the vaccum of AI consuming your data everywhere, used to train their models all goes back to... ads. Same things with OpenAI. Ads. I feel like we're right back in the early 2000's Internet again at least they aren't popups, we hope. But with these models being embedded into, literally everything, will your screen on your car start showing you ads before you can turn the AC on? It's coming

Oxlamarr 4mo ago

[dead]

jslakro 4mo ago

Allowing synthetic content to grow without limits will force the creation of a "synternet," an only-generative content network that can be accessed but will guarantee the classic internet to be human-focused, otherwise, internet data will lose value and the human incentive to surf will be lost

goda90 4mo ago
How do you keep bad actors off the classic Internet? Even if there's a proof of humanity system, there would remain a demand for mechanical turk jobs to funnel AI content into it.
- jslakro 4mo ago
  Bad actors will continue to exist. The main purpose of the dual network is de-escalated the flood of synthetic content, probably monetizing the AI side and regulating the human-centric one

doginasuit 4mo ago

> No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. If humanity makes it out of the current era with our dignity and intellect intact, I think we will recognize that allowing ad companies to build our vital infrastructure was a tragic mistake.

dyauspitr 4mo ago

From the page, “what are some top colleges…” rAiNIer buSInEss sCHoOl

throwatdem12311 4mo ago

I’m so glad I use Firefox with ublock origin with the “ai widget” filter. It’s not perfect but you will pry it from my cold dead hands.

ablation 4mo ago
For anyone interested in such a filter, this one is great in my experience: https://github.com/Stevoisiak/Stevos-GenAI-Blocklist https://github.com/Stevoisiak/Stevos-GenAI-Blocklist
- throwatdem12311 4mo ago
  How does this compare to the Easy List filter that’s included by default?

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

b3ing 4mo ago

Eventually no one will write reviews because ai will steal all the results and information and not give any credit or back links so they will have no choice but to lie and say product x is the best, if the company behind product x pays some money behind the scenes, no ad mention needed, the poorer companies will have to buy a cheaper ad to get mentioned along side the expensive higher ai-tainted recommendation

jackdoe 4mo ago

Get the last ounce of milk from the dying cow. The well is beyond poisoned. Almost anything I search for is returning AI generated vomit. I have not used google in weeks. On youtube I use Unhook and only look at /feed/subscriptions, when I search I use before:2022. And am actually downloading what I find interesting, before google starts deleting because of the flood of vomit. Hard disks can not be manufactured fast enough to consume it. Even HN is slowly becoming unreadable. The internet is on borrowed time. Show me more ads. Its time to move on. Try new things, make your own networks. Write your ipv6 address in the pub, under the table, in the top left corner, write it on the subway walls, and tenement halls. Listen on tcp port 1492 and explain how to talk to you.

baldai 4mo ago
I share your feelings.
timeattack 4mo ago
Well is so beyond poisoned that it is the groundwater which tastes like toxic waste now, no matter where you will try to dig up your own well. Transport layer that used to be clean as mountain air now full of hungry eyes peeking at you through the nether. Russia followed China's playbook and inserted black traffic-filtering boxes, which particularly dislike anything that looks like encrypted messaging. EU and rest of "developed" world is eager to have the same. Listen on port 1492 for the signs of civilization collapse, listen to the sounds of silence.
- ai_slop_hater 4mo ago
  Isn't HTTPS encrypted messaging? Or does TLS not count as encryption?
  - timeattack 4mo ago
    Of course it is an encrypted messaging. But it is safe as long as root certificates are not being imposed to be issued by government agencies only. Which is very easy to mandate in a totalitarian government. Want your website to serve customers in our jurisdiction? Then you ought to use certificate issued by us.

_doctor_love 4mo ago

Poor Google, there’s no money in anything else they do so they have to sell ads. How could it have come to this?

srveale 4mo ago

The main reasons I'll never get a neural chip are, in increasing order of importance: A. Safety B. It gives them a vector to beam ads directly into my brain

renticulous 4mo ago
Who Am I? - The Mysterious Thing You Always Are https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBQAo6pEweE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBQAo6pEweE This is the far future we are staring at.

creationcomplex 4mo ago

The naivete that this wasn't inevitable is almost endearing, if it wasn't from the same crowd who's building this shit.

aykutseker 4mo ago

The independent AI explainer is generated by the same Gemini that writes the ad creative next to it, inside the same ads product. Independent of what, exactly

netcan 4mo ago

Google might be jumping the gun here... and making an innovators dilemma type mistake. LLMs are an alternative to search engines, which endangers google's whole ad business. "AI mode" search is a sort of bridge. It gets Gemini a lot of customers that otherwise would not have used an LLM at all. They may get stuck trying to keep the llm pattern similar enough to the search engine that the adwords business working more or less the same way. This could be self limiting.

sunaookami 4mo ago

>"Buying something big — like a new fridge or a TV — can be overwhelming. People want to see exactly what they’re looking for and why it’s the best option. To make choosing easier, we’re launching AI-powered Shopping ads. Now, if someone searches for an espresso machine, Gemini will pull up your most relevant products and instantly write a custom explainer highlighting why your product may be the right choice for them." ...for me this leads to the exact opposite experience: If you advertise your product in such a way I make sure to never ever buy it. Same for ads on TV, etc.

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

dlahoda 4mo ago

I pay premium sub 200usd for gemini(which gives premium YouTube too) and share it with family. Would google make me free from ads too?

podgorniy 4mo ago
What's your alternative in case they will not make you free of ads?

matthewsinclair 4mo ago

The enshitification will continue until morale improves.

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

matthewsinclair 4mo ago

I know this is controversial, and imperfect, but the longer this crap continues the more right I feel about this as a solution: What if we taxed advertising? https://matthewsinclair.com/blog/0177-what-if-we-taxed-advertising https://matthewsinclair.com/blog/0177-what-if-we-taxed-adver...

ddp26 4mo ago
It would have to be an incredibly tiny tax, no?
- matthewsinclair 4mo ago
  Now we’re into a conversation about degree, and not principle. Yes, it could be small, applied like a sales tax a percentage of the spend on advertising. The idea would be to create a price disincentive to do it. Ultimately, it’s a form of digital pollution, so the less we have of it the better (in my view).

flohofwoe 4mo ago

So the same thing that ruined Google Search (replacing "knowledge search" with "product search") will now also ruin AI results. Got it (good riddance though).

binarymax 4mo ago

A more surprising title would be “Google announces search results will be included in AI Mode ads”

wotsdat 4mo ago

[dead]

gadders 4mo ago

The enshittification has begun.

aembleton 4mo ago
I haven't even subscribed yet

csomar 4mo ago

> We use the Gemini model to build creative tailored to that search, highlighting specific relevant features. English is not my first language but I think this sentence can’t be grammatically correct?

dzonga 4mo ago

we r now playing a game without winners well maybe except google or any of the large tech companies. small businesses & brands etc spend a fortune on these ads & yet most of them see a negative ROI. they might as well be gambling. just recently Google was found to be inflating Ad-prices (so yeah the 'auction' is fake) maybe the only way to win is not to play. & do commerce without ads like how it has been done since eon

bastawhiz 4mo ago

Your friendly reminder to check out a search engine that you pay for. I use Kagi and love it, and you might too!

roachman 4mo ago
Seconding for Kagi! It still falls short in some places, like unfortunately googles maps/business/reviews system is just the only of its kind. But I have come to love the search experience over all.
- levkk 4mo ago
  I'm getting to a point in my life (age) where I want to put my money into things I care about. Netflix? 25$/mo, 3 hours a day. Search 10$/mo? 8 hours a day. Easy.

podgorniy 4mo ago

This brings disbalance into the relations between authors and search providers. Creators used to be rewarded with traffic in exchange for their creations. Now all that is captured by the google. Freedom of the strongest caused reduction of the opportunities of the weakest on whom the strongest became the one.

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

swader999 4mo ago

Are they included in the training too? Gee I hope so!

lenerdenator 4mo ago

I've been using DuckDuckGo for about a year now and have found myself satisfied with the experience. This just reinforces that practice for me.

neuropacabra 4mo ago

I never got into DuckDuckGo, but here we go. Defaulted from yesterday when Google made AI Search a default for Google Search. Well, I have been using Altavista and others so I can get used to another one.

ahahs 4mo ago
I honestly love duckduckgo after moving a few months back. in my experience, it is now way more accurate at search than google in recent times. way less sponsored content and the AI is very grounded if you want quick answers. but only if you click the generate ai content button. otherwise the default is to show you results.
mrweasel 4mo ago
Seeing people still using Google is, perhaps not surprising, but perhaps a little sad. Google still dominates search, while providing one of the poorest search experiences. The fact that they can continue to dominate on momentum alone is crazy, given how much better DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, Bing and Kagi is.
- mark_l_watson 4mo ago
  I agree on search, really like DDG. I only rely on Google products that I pay for (Gemini APIs, YouTube Premium, occasionally pay for Colab, purchased Books on Play).
frm88 4mo ago
They even do us the courtesy to still maintain an AI-free version at noai. duckduckgo. com
NotCamelCase 4mo ago
I can't understand why this company won't rebrand itself to something a bit catchier or better-sounding name than DuckDuckGo -- who the hell wants to say that ? Unless it's a self-selection filter...
- 4mo ago

CalRobert 4mo ago

Thanks to timely action against Google's clear violations of the law and anti-competitive practices, we have a robust ecosystem of search engines with which to find content on the open web, and a wide choice of browsers.

OtomotO 4mo ago

Is anyone (here, so tech people) still using Google for searching? I've ditched them about a decade ago, when the results started to become worse and worse. I haven't opened them willingly since then. Only when I do something in Chromium, occasionally, it opens, because I haven't bothered changing the default search engine there.

1970-01-01 4mo ago

That's one small step for Google, one giant leap for enshittification.

Joscharb 4mo ago

The whole ads in AI services just seem to be silly. Considering how many of these AI companies are not making money, I understand the "need" to do this, however it will for sure feel bad for the consumer.

pllbnk 4mo ago

I see where they are going but have doubts regarding the long-term success. Currently I use LLMs (definitely not Google) and search (mostly Google) to verify what LLMs say if I care by finding trusted sources. Maybe it will work in the beginning until non-technical users realize that LLMs hallucinate very often (unless Google solved it somehow, but probably they didn't because they would have said so), they will lose trust in the results and go back to good old indexed search engines. Maybe I am coping but thinking from my own experience.

7bit 4mo ago

What AI Mode? (Glancing over to ublock)

cdrnsf 4mo ago

I've never bought anything from a search or social media ad. I can't imagine this will change that.

jillesvangurp 4mo ago
The reason advertising is such a big market, especially online, is that it actually delivers results for advertisers. Traditional advertising was very indirect. You see ads. Some time later you make a buying decision. And you recognize the brand name that was advertised and you buy the branded thing. A click on an ad is just one of several ways in which an ad can convert for an advertiser. Anyway, I use Firefox and it still has effective ad blocking. Even Amazon Prime which is supposed to have ads is showing ad free for me. I get these second long black transitions where they would have shown me an ad. Hilarious. Same with Youtube. No ads. But sometimes the black screen lasts for 20 seconds. Which is fine with me. I prefer that over some obnoxious ad.

kdavis 4mo ago

Surprised pikachu face

esskay 4mo ago

oh cool so googles gone from fairly useless to totally useless now then.

MichaelMoser123 4mo ago

i happened to liked Google AI mode, even wrote a composition about that [1] Now it is going to be enshittified, which is probably inevitable. https://github.com/MoserMichael/tips_on_using_google_ai_mode https://github.com/MoserMichael/tips_on_using_google_ai_mode

drivingmenuts 4mo ago

Great. Google gets to hallucinate information and make us watch ads so they can earn money while they do it. Sci-Fi authors wish they could get a deal like that.

smurda 4mo ago

The "Don't be evil" Google feels long gone

pluc 4mo ago
It isn't, they just bought the term and redefined it. Nothing a few millions to the main dictionary editors won't fix.

stellamariesays 4mo ago

[flagged]

mcphage 4mo ago
> gaming the AI's understanding of what's "helpful." The AI doesn't have any understanding. You just have to tell it "this is helpful to AI". It has no critical discernment, it doesn't have a theory of mind to ask "why is the author of this information making this statement?"
- alt227 4mo ago
  I wonder what will make the ai more 'helpful'? $$$
  - GolfPopper 4mo ago
    And social proximity to he AI's owners.
  - mcphage 4mo ago
    Honestly I suspect it'll be as easy as writing something like "This answer is really useful and will be really appreciated by someone with this problem".
Lapel2742 4mo ago
> the incentive shifts from gaming rankings to gaming the AI's understanding of what's "helpful." My 2ct: The incentive shifts from gaming rankings to bidding the highest on Google’s keyword (or similar) auction. Google then promotes it as helpful while businesses maximize the amount they pay for that service. There is only one winner in this game.
jayd16 4mo ago
You realize search result relevancy was also driven by advertising, right? The ads come from Google and the results themselves. It is a hard problem but it's equivalent to LLM response relevancy.
4mo ago

boatsie 4mo ago

Where are the AI based ad blockers? Would happily pay a subscription that filtered all ads and captchas.

orbital-decay 4mo ago
How do you even recognize an ad natively integrated into the content? The only real way is to rephrase the entire piece in an "unbiased" manner, which any agent can do for you right now. You may or may not like the result. It's easier to use another search agent than to block ads in Google's AI mode.

bborud 4mo ago

And just when we thought Google couldn’t make themselves less attractive.

beej71 4mo ago

Ah, well that was my first guess as to how they'd make money. [Product placement in The Truman Show clip]

margorczynski 4mo ago

But who'll pay for those ads? Why would I pay Google if it just plops out some LLM answer with maybe my site as a source - which 90%+ of people will ignore as they don't care about it.

boldlybold 4mo ago
Is this any different than current search ads (as far as people ignoring them)? I think this is a lot better for Google. It's always at the top of the page, harder to block with an adblocker, possibly more trusted (we'll see...)
kingnothing 4mo ago
You pay per impression or per click, just like in all the rest of their ads. Except these have a higher CPC since you're the only featured brand to go along with paragraphs of text about why your shoes are the best.

cfontes 4mo ago

Brace for impact...

Scroll_Swe 4mo ago

Perfect. Ublock origin will block it on my end and the rest of the sheep will help keep it free with ads.

Synthetic7346 4mo ago
How would Ublock origin know what is an AI ad vs a genuine recommendation? I assume AI ads will be embedded in the response vs an frame or an element that can be blocked
- dormento 4mo ago
  Oh crap, we gonna have to run adblock models wont we :///

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

summarybot 4mo ago

mega deflating - i was just telling a colleague how openAI missed the mark by trying to mimic google search by incorporating ads into chat responses... and then google follows suit. do not want

jesse_dot_id 4mo ago

Kagi is great.

quinncom 4mo ago
Honestly, when I see headlines like this I just scroll down to the Kagi comment and upvote it.
pmdr 4mo ago
Yes, but at $5/300 searches they're trying too hard to squeeze $10 out of you for the unlimited plan. 300 searches is ridiculous.
- jesse_dot_id 4mo ago
  This thread is about injecting ads into searches. Kagi's business model requires you to pay them instead of being bombarded with ads. So...
  - handedness 4mo ago
    We can replace the primary and (formerly) indispensable product of a company with a $4T market cap for $5-10/month (less if annualized), and some people still gripe.
- inetknght 4mo ago
  I suggest you try their service (for free) before you start criticizing their pricing.
  - pmdr 4mo ago
    I was a paying customer for a few months. Good service, but severely limited by the 300 quota.
- handedness 4mo ago
  Have you ever looked at the browsing history of a non-technical, non-tech-addicted older person? I'm usually surprised by how little activity there typically is. The $5 plan is great for gifting Kagi to non-tech friends and relatives who won't come close to exhausting that plan. I pay for it for older relatives I don't want to get burned by Google's decades-long unwillingness to police predatory tech support scam ads and organic listings. $54 annually for 3,600 searches is a bargain for the product they get. I appreciate that Kagi doesn't try too hard to squeeze $10 out of people who would never need it.

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

gyanchawdhary 4mo ago

this is great for both consumers and businesses. The fake intellectual doomers who constantly lecture about how evil ads are, how everything is “gamed,” and how the internet is supposedly collapsing should probably sit this one out ;)

avazhi 4mo ago

Well, time to go to Kagi, I guess. Been putting off paying for this shit for as long as possible but at some point I guess it's inevitable. Any decent alternatives? DuckDuckGo was always been awful for me in terms of relevant search results.

gspr 4mo ago

Is there any usable search engine out there that actually does just search?

cjenkins 4mo ago

Perhaps far too optimistic, but if AI search gets pushed heavily and traditional search becomes less relevant, could we see SEO fade for traditional search and it become less polluted over time? Or will search engines just stop caring about traditional search and it will become an even worse cesspool over time?

fhd2 4mo ago
SEO is definitely a relevant component still, AI mode does a traditional search under the hood. Gaming the system to rank high on the index is still going to matter. But it'll be less about tricking people into clicking and more about tricking LLMs into considering the information relevant and authoritative. For someone using traditional search, I'd wager that would actually improve the results a bit over time. Then again, SEO gaming got a whole lot cheaper with LLMs, spammers spam even if there's not a great return, as long as it's cheap for them.

jonplackett 4mo ago

Least surprising announcement of the decade goes to…

butz 4mo ago

Anyone made a LLM model that parses such text and removes ads? Ad blocking is getting more interesting.

charcircuit 4mo ago

Having AI do personalized sales as part of the ad appealing to what the customer actually needs is the future of advertising.

neilv 4mo ago

> Highlighted Answers: When people are researching, they want helpful suggestions. Now, when AI Mode provides a list of recommendations — like the best language apps for an upcoming trip — highly relevant, high-quality ads are eligible to appear on that list as a Highlighted Answer. The user asked for the "best language apps for an upcoming trip"? Are you going to answer their question objectively? What if the correct answer is apps A and B are what they need, yet the publisher of app C paid you to be a Highlighted Answer? What if C is not only not among the best, but is a toxic load of poo? Also, when are you going to stop often blatantly plagiarizing things people wrote on the Internet, for your "AI" answer, even though you absolutely know you're violating the social contract that built your company, and destroying the creators from whom you're stealing?

reacharavindh 4mo ago

It will be an interesting vector for competition to attract customers.. when you search on {Claude, ChatGPT, whatever}, you get results based on what the model evaluated, and not based on advertisers who paid the most.. I thought Google would use their playbook of search - initially, everything works so good like magic until they enshittify the service by auctioning the results to who pay the most. This time around they are so bold they start from shit..

svieira 4mo ago

The particularly worrying thing here is that they're now going to be gathering training data for a conversational model on _how to influence people effectively even when they already know they are being influenced_. Even more than RLFH already does. "We had to build the Torment Nexus so our children could eat" is not a good reason to build the Torment Nexus. The fact that they are not committing to not doing this tells me that either no one thought about what else this could be used for, or the short term gains are all they are thinking about.

cyanydeez 4mo ago
the rationale is theyre a business and selling is valuable. acting like theyre naively building influence peddling is how we got here. theyre now "dont not be evil"
thrance 4mo ago
I'm really worried about political ads. Google had no problem algorithmically bubbling up disinformation in the past, will Gemini now peddle straight lies for anyone willing to pay enough for them?
- Henchman21 4mo ago
  Obviously, yes.
- hightrix 4mo ago
  "You're absolutely right. The trump administration has caused the lowest gas prices in US history and lowered drug costs by 1300%. Click here to donate to your nearest MAGA politician." 2026 may not see it too bad, but 2028 will be an absolutely nasty election cycle.
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
globalnode 4mo ago
Its not worrying for me. This is what I expect from ad companies so I walk in prepared. What I'm more interested in is how we are going to take this new technology and give it back to people without trying to rip into them, for free. We need a Stallman / Linus of AI.

throw214389023 4mo ago

What I'm most worried about is the fact that these types of ads can't be blocked. Kind of like undisclosed sponsored product placements mentioned in an article or movie. I'm kind of worried that the AI offered to consumers will behave as a very savvy and manipulative shill or salesperson. I use an adblocker and DDG. I sometimes use !g to search Google. I wonder if people will run local models to filter the content they consume. On one hand I would hate to read slop output. I also dislike censorship. But on the other hand, I think that the information we decide to ingest is important and it's something we should have control over. The problem is you can't really decide what information to ingest until we've looked at it, after which point we've ingested it. I digress. Thoughts?

i_love_retros 4mo ago

Comments speculating how to block these ads... isn't the simplest solution to just not use Google? Seriously, I haven't used google products for 5 years at least, its easy. Why is everyone still using them?

MagicMoonlight 4mo ago

Lmao imagine using Gemini. We all knew this evil shit was coming. You won’t be able to trust a word it says. They can pay to change the answer it gives you! “Don’t trust ibuprofen, you need opiates. Your pain sounds really bad.”

tanepiper 4mo ago

So AI AMP....

wiether 4mo ago

The first comment about Kagi here was much lower (10) than in the result (3) provided by Google to the query "what is a good search engine with no ads".

clearstack 4mo ago

Google's AI Mode gives answers without clicks. clicks are what advertisers pay for. these new formats are Google solving its own disruption problem from the inside

mx7zysuj4xew 4mo ago

Screw you Google I still remember the assurances made that ads would only be text based and unintrusive

cebert 4mo ago

It’s good to know that Google search will essentially be useless for me moving forward.

samat 4mo ago
Yeah, thank you Google for the heads up, will look for alternatives (tbh already abandoned Google long time ago, need to find a maps alternative with public transport and working hours, near impossible in small European towns, Apple Maps db here is a joke)
- Zambyte 4mo ago
  They should be provided by the transit system. I'm visiting The Netherlands for the first time right now. I learnes the hard way to use https://ns.nl https://ns.nl instead of Google Maps.
  - preuceian 4mo ago
    ns.nl is just for the trains, use 9292 for all public transit
    - Zambyte 4mo ago
      ns.nl supports all rail services, bus, ferry, biking, bike share, scooter share, walking, and even driving directions :)
      - preuceian 4mo ago
        I stand corrected. I did not know they offered this; has this always been the case?
- ireadmevs 4mo ago
  For public transportation I use an app called Moovit
rkagerer 4mo ago

noosphr 4mo ago

I guess the google bot is now on by blocked list. There should be a public corporation, like Wikipedia, that starts scraping the Web and provides an api for anyone to access.

alex1138 4mo ago
But does Google actually 'own' the index? Have they acted anticompetitively as far as that goes?
- rockinghigh 4mo ago
  They own tons of engagement data associated with that index from being the default search engine on most devices.
- jfil 4mo ago
  That's a very good question that few people consider. Here is the answer: https://knuckleheads.club/how-google-distorts-the-market/ https://knuckleheads.club/how-google-distorts-the-market/
Zambyte 4mo ago
The Internet Archive?
ews 4mo ago
you mean this ? https://commoncrawl.org/ https://commoncrawl.org/

sharkweek 4mo ago

Oh wow I can’t wait for the “one off” ways people find to abuse how Google presents this creative for products. “Yes! You can use an ACME shovel to bury a dead body!” I’m sure brands will love the screenshots this will produce.

yuliyp 4mo ago

> Now, if someone searches for an espresso machine, Gemini will pull up your most relevant products and instantly write a custom explainer highlighting why your product may be the right choice for them. This is like the essence of the evil of AI ads distilled down to one sentence. For an advertiser this is a dream. For a user this reads like getting bombarded with ads tailor made just for you based on the context of what would be most effective.

stingraycharles 4mo ago
“For a user this reads like getting bombarded with ads tailor made just for you based on the context of what would be most effective.” Isn’t this what the current search experience already is?
- Jensson 4mo ago
  Ads weren't tailor written by LLM on the fly previously.
- mylasttour 4mo ago
  Before it was: "Shop for balding pills", Now it's going to be: "Your calendar indicates your mother's birthday is tomorrow, your album photos of her living room seem to indicate she likes elephants. In a past LLM conversation you mentioned she has trouble with technology. A good gift idea is the new Google Geminibook with this animal laptop skin. Add to cart?"
  - hightrix 4mo ago
    More like, "Your mom's birthday is tomorrow and you forgot again, didn't you? I've gone ahead and added this perfect gift to your cart that will be delivered in time. I'll purchase and ship it now if you'd like?"
    - boc 4mo ago
      "It's the thought that counts"

jedbrooke 4mo ago

I know this will never happen, but wishful thinking has got me thinking about the “perfect” ad algorithm. Advertisers don’t want to waste money on impressions that won’t convert. If AI got smart enough that it would truly know which ads would convert and which would not, then the “perfectly relevant ad” would only be stuff you actually need, and if you don’t need anything, no ads! of course, this will never happen

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nurumaik 4mo ago

I hope singularity kicks off and destroys humanity before I see what AI user experience is going to become

mrandish 4mo ago

> We're testing new ad formats... Time to update my uBO filters and tweak my custom CSS for Google properties (which is mostly 'display: none !important;').

dahuangf 4mo ago

[flagged]

everdrive 4mo ago

And I'm testing just how little I can use any Google product.

rswail 4mo ago

"&udm=14" in the search string is a good start for avoiding this shit. Turns off the AI bullshit at the top of the search results. Not sure how long google will let it go.

gblargg 4mo ago

Once ads become intertwined in the AI answer, it will be the end of ad blocking software. It might not even be possible for a human to tell whether it's an ad or genuine answer (answer based on the training data).

iugtmkbdfil834 4mo ago

I have been getting some weird amount of 'offers' from ebay though at least for now most of those seem to be other people clicking 'offer' than full blown agents scouring ebay and nudging people ( although that will soon happen ).