Google Declaring War on the Web

I like what Google is doing, huge fan. I can't fathom why no one else is. When I search, I'm trying to find things. With what Google is doing, the AI overview gets me answers very fast. It includes links for its sources I can click on if I'm interested.

I think people are just too used to wasting hours of their lives visiting random sites and scouring for answers. If you like that experience, I don't see why you can't still have that, is it really that hard to ignore the AI overview? Or better yet, use and support DDG.

Google search's AI overview is by far my favorite AI application. The amount of tabs I don't have to open anymore to get a simple freaking answer is such a relief.

> Your work, your writing or art do matter a bit still

I'm really tired of this nonsense. If I want your art and Google doesn't show me, you have an excellent point. If I'm searching for a meme and Google just gives me that, instead of having me wander around clicking on deviantart and random sites simulating "visits" to your site, that's not me wanting your art, that's me wasting time and you mistaking that for a like.

Google owes things to different parties. Their shareholders, their employees, their users, their paying customers, etc.. People with random site are not owed a thing by Google. I don't want Google to refrain from helping me acheive my goals with their product so that some random people's desire to feel important is prioritized. Your random site is an unrelated 3rd party in this interaction.

I despise Google for so many things. They really are destroying the web with their monopoly of the browser markets. I hate what they're doing to Youtube. I think Android is total crap. I really despise them for ruining webextensions. The list goes on. I'm not their fan. But I am huge fan of Google search. I stopped using it for so many years, now I'm having to use them exclusively out of sheer necessity.

I really wish people drop every single ideology they have. Publish quality work, and things that work well. Then pick back up their ideologies and complain about how their high quality work is not getting the attention it deserves.

Honestly, I'm so weirded about this sort of stuff. Even Amazon, I hear people complain about it all the time, but I have nothing but praise for all their work (despite knowing what a villain Bezos is, and what horrible place to work both Amazon and AWS are). It's like I'm living in an alternate reality, or people are abandoning sincere and critical analysis for the sake of ideological goals. Like, I'm trying all the alternatives, I've put in lots of time and effort, and they just suck. Don't tell me to deny the evidence my eyes and ears are witnessing for your ideology. Instead tell me how I shouldn't use Google because of some ideological reason, instead of the quality being poor.

It’s like saying robbing banks for a living isn’t sustainable and working at a bank is. That’s not exactly a stretch.

This is an analogy, obviously. Ikea has been innovative, and it does provide a useful service for people; if you just moved into a new place and need to furnish it as quickly and cheaply as possible, then off to Ikea you go. But it's still shitty furniture.

My furniture doesn't look great, sometimes. My joinery is not perfect. I don't have all the tools I need to do this properly. But the design goals for each are what we need to live our lives. My wife has a stupidly high bed in her office, piled mattresses so she can spread them out if we have many visitors. I made her a bedside table that matches that height. It's a complete one-off; I won't make another that size, and we probably won't need it if we move house.

My point is that we already have this split in other areas of our lives; the Vimes Theory of boots (rich people buy boots that last generations, poor people buy boots every year). Ikea furniture. Buying a mass-produced crockery from a big store, or buying hand-made crockery from a local potter. We're just adding information and code to this split.

The answer is probably going over to kagi where you are the customer not the product.

Honestly, not all web sites, there are still good ones out there but the search engines never direct me to them. It is always just slop all day long.