There is some stuff written about how Google struggles between offering a great customer experience and profitability, but AI is changing that. Here are two articles that address Google’s continued anticompetitive behaviour, and AI become an interlocutor for search.
- The long tail lockdown: how Google is quietly fencing off the internet for itself on Medium, behind a paywall, but available with a friend link. This article by Enrique Dans talks about Google’s control of the entry point for crawlers and AI training.
- What will happen to websites? (In Italian) at Stultifera Navis (which has an interesting translation) by Carlos Mazzuccheli; I read it via Firefox which offered me an automatic translation. I made an English Translation (using tools). Amongst the article’s pieces of evidence, is the assertion that search or click through are dramatically declining.
It is Karen Hao’s contention that Sam Altman deliberately made ChatGPT so compute intensive so he didn’t have to compete with Google on talent. It would be ironic if “training’s” need for web crawlers handed the competitive advantage back to Google.
This essay, https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/ by Ed Zitron examines the dialectic tension between Google’s need to earn, through results sponsorship versus the necessary honesty to keep people using it.
I really need to get to grips with the fragment on machines and the ownership of knowledge.