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Google Declaring War on the Web

tante.cc

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Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#62

I don't understand the endgame here. Websites let Google crawl their content in exchange of traffic. If Google cuts that out completely, what incentive do websites have to not block the Google crawlers? I understand that Google is feeling an existential threat from other AI products that provide answers directly. But they must also understand their symbiotic relationship with the web.

The end game is the consumer no longer leaving Google and the web becoming synonymous to Google for them. Why shop on some random website when you can have Gemini buy it for you? Why look for information on Wikipedia when… you get the idea. I think the coming years will be pivotal for the web. Facebook attempted a similar strategy back when their apps got traction, but they ultimately failed. Let’s hope Google fails…

We're going back to the CompuServe/AOL/Prodigy model

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#63
the cool thing, google is much like meta, the kids see it as something boomers are using. my daughter is 12, whenever I say “google it” she says “that’s very, very funny Dad, you are fun guy.” it’ll take some time until boomers are off google as well (my usage of google is probably at 30% of where it used to be) but their days of “this is where you go to ‘search’” are numbered

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#64
post #56

Kind of curious how it would pan out, if there was a government enforced meta tag one could add to signal what the data could be used for - for example “no-ai”. That would allow people to still let Google to access their site, but restrict its usage. Similar for open source projects on GitHub, etc.

> government enforced

The thing everyone needs to ask before advocating for something "government enforced" is "what would happen if this was in the hands of a hostile government?"

And then remember that (a) just because it's not hostile to you today, doesn't mean it won't be tomorrow, and (b) one man's "hostile" is another man's "utopia."

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#65

I feel like AI has gotten to the point where the message is: If you want to make something (art/code/music/writing) you can do it for your own enjoyment, but you aren't allowed to make money from it anymore; only the large corporations can make money from content. If you do release something creative, it'll just be fed back into the machine to be copied over and over.

[deleted]

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#67

I feel like AI has gotten to the point where the message is: If you want to make something (art/code/music/writing) you can do it for your own enjoyment, but you aren't allowed to make money from it anymore; only the large corporations can make money from content. If you do release something creative, it'll just be fed back into the machine to be copied over and over.

A big corporation using LLM’s to pump out lazy “art” gets the exact same scrutiny from me.

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#68
post #56

Kind of curious how it would pan out, if there was a government enforced meta tag one could add to signal what the data could be used for - for example “no-ai”. That would allow people to still let Google to access their site, but restrict its usage. Similar for open source projects on GitHub, etc.

> government enforced The thing everyone needs to ask before advocating for something "government enforced" is "what would happen if this was in the hands of a hostile government?" And then remember that (a) just because it's not hostile to you today, doesn't mean it won't be tomorrow, and (b) one man's "hostile" is another man's "utopia."

Well, when I said “I’m curious” it was true. I’m actually curious.

So how do you think a meta noai tag would be used by a hostile government?

It would be something the website owner set.

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#69

I feel like AI has gotten to the point where the message is: If you want to make something (art/code/music/writing) you can do it for your own enjoyment, but you aren't allowed to make money from it anymore; only the large corporations can make money from content. If you do release something creative, it'll just be fed back into the machine to be copied over and over.

Needs to be inverted.

Tax excess tech profits that derive from the efforts of others and use the proceeds to fund living artists.

Vaguely analogous to levies on blank cassettes that went to offset piracy. Give the money directly to actual artists, not labels/publishers, though.

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#70
post #56

Kind of curious how it would pan out, if there was a government enforced meta tag one could add to signal what the data could be used for - for example “no-ai”. That would allow people to still let Google to access their site, but restrict its usage. Similar for open source projects on GitHub, etc.

The tech giants already violated existing copyright laws when scraping for AI content and faced very few consequences. So far the government has shown an inability to enforce anything.
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