When Google’s slop meets webslop, search stops: pluralistic.net/2025/07/15/inh…
A very good article on awful Google AI search results and how Google have ruined their own reputation by wrecking their workforce, by @pluralistic. A quote:
'Publishers and advertisers have more concentrated money than readers, but the dominant theory of antitrust since the Reagan administration is something called "consumer welfare," which holds that monopolistic conduct is only to be condemned if it makes consumers worse off. If a company screws its workers or suppliers in order to deliver better products and/or better prices, then "consumer welfare" holds that the government should celebrate and protect the monopolist for improving "efficiency."
But all that is true only if Google AI Overviews are good. And they are very, very bad.'
Don't use Google for search.
#google #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #AISlop #CoryDoctorow #search #slop
Niklas Pivic
in reply to Niklas Pivic • • •This part of the article is very enlightening from a worker perspective, especially when Google upper management have relatively recently fired around 10,000 workers:
'Once Google stops growing, it becomes a "mature" company and its PE ratio will fall from 20:1 to something more like 4:1, meaning an 80% collapse in the company's share price. This would be very bad news for Googlers (whose personal wealth is disproportionately tied up in Google stock) and for Google itself (because many of its key personnel will depart when the shares they've banked for retirement collapse, and new hires will expect to be paid in scarce dollars, not abundant stock). For a company like Google, "maturity" is unlikely to be a steady state – rather, it's likely to be a prelude to collapse.
Which is why Google is so desperately sweaty to maintain the narrative about its growth.'
#google #layoffs
Cavyherd
in reply to Niklas Pivic • • •Reading this article now. "Housefresh released its latest report on Google's enshittification, this time with an emphasis on the "AI Overviews" that now surmount every search results page."
It also strikes me that that AI overview is also likely an attempt to supplant Wikipedia's place in the digital landscape, since that's the actually-somewhat-reliable thing that would come up in that position otherwise.
Which I'm sure Google would be •just fine• with....
Cavyherd
in reply to Cavyherd • • •