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Google Declaring War on the Web

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Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#21

Post by queenkjuul »

superkuh wrote: post #7

It is not just about replacing search results with text blurbs generated on Alphabet premise either. They're making it so that unless you have an Android certified (Or Apple) smartphone you will not be a human being, you will be assumed to be a bot and blocked by their captchas.

Honestly the bigger problem for me. I use SearXNG, but DDG is acceptable, or people like Kagi.

But if ReCAPTCHA won't consider me human unless i have a certified phone, having search alternatives doesn't matter -- the websites themselves are just gonna block me

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#22

Post by mschuster91 »

dude250711 wrote: post #11

Well, they are kind of desperate after missing both cloud and AI. I would blame trash like Discord more though. Alternative search engines are available, but the crappy little web chat hides info inside.

> I would blame trash like Discord more though. Alternative search engines are available, but the crappy little web chat hides info inside.

Well, we had the same problem with IRC. There's value to be had in not everything being discoverable in 5 seconds with a google search.

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#23

Post by coro_1 »

> De-googlifying your mental apparatus becomes more urgent today. Find other search engines, don’t use the Chrome browser. Or wake up in a slopified AOL kind of environment where your access to information is limited to what Google’s synthetic text extruders deem relevant.

Everything is probably re-traceable fairly easily because Google Analytics is on nearly every web page.

But I understand maintaining your own source of archives, videos, documents, etc.

Sounds like a good vibe coding project actually.. to try and keep it all organized offline.

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#24

Post by mudil »

Google declared war on blogs and other content long time ago, when it used our websites to harvest data to target readers with ads accross the entire internet. We used to have (for twenty years!) medical technology website for MDs. How can we compete with short unrelated YouTube videos or other spam content that serve Google ads targeting doctors? How do you think the entire creative blogosphere of the early 2000s collapsed into nothingness?

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#25

Post by teamonkey »

LinuxAmbulance wrote: post #10

We abrogated getting traffic to our websites to Google long ago. Mostly because Google was so good at it that the alternatives became significantly less useful. Now that Google is focusing on becoming 'self contained', so to speak, we should find a better way to drive traffic to websites. Ideally one that's not under the control of a single corporation. Anyone miss StumbleUpon?

It feels strange there’s no decentralised search.

I know this is likely to do with the nature of the problem, but that hasn’t stopped us from getting some wildly-unsuitable decentralised nonsense in the past.

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#26

Post by coldpie »

superkuh wrote: post #7

It is not just about replacing search results with text blurbs generated on Alphabet premise either. They're making it so that unless you have an Android certified (Or Apple) smartphone you will not be a human being, you will be assumed to be a bot and blocked by their captchas.

Passkeys are a big part of this future, too. The spec has device attestation built in, so if passkeys gain traction, they could lock it down so only approved software is allowed to log in to services. If that happens, it means your ability to log in to services will be mediated by one of 3 US big tech companies. "For security," of course.

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#27

Post by DeusExMachina »

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.

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#28

Post by jollymonATX »

As a website owner I have seen major upticks in viewership myself but really it hits hard when you see an Ai summary that is wrong and your sites there. The whole Ai for everything push unfortunatly will downskill the world I fear and nothing can be done about it.

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#29

Post by analogpixel »

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.

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#30

Post by margalabargala »

somewhereoutth wrote: post #20
LinuxAmbulance wrote: post #10

We abrogated getting traffic to our websites to Google long ago. Mostly because Google was so good at it that the alternatives became significantly less useful. Now that Google is focusing on becoming 'self contained', so to speak, we should find a better way to drive traffic to websites. Ideally one that's not under the control of a single corporation. Anyone miss StumbleUpon?

(sorry, nit pick, but I don't your usage of 'abrogate' is quite correct here, you can't abrogate to something)

> but I don't your usage

If we're nitpicking, you don't what their usage?

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