For all of you who think, that the AI overview spares you the hustle of clicking on any links in the search result:
The guardian: Google AI Overviews put people at risk of harm with misleading health advice
And half as likely to find what they need
My response when I see 3/4 of my results page is an AI summary is to close the page in disgust as usually it just regurgitates a bland summary of shit I already know on the topic.
Maybe they’re reading that as success?
The reason? Google hasn’t had as long to enshittify their AI as they have their search results.
They shit in the search results precisely so we’ll use the ai instead
I used to always magically find what I was looking for. Now I don’t and sometimes only the ai results include the relevant webpages I was searching for
AI search will win because they already are making it so
Nah. They definitely are using that now that their AI is competing in the market. But the enshittification started before Generative AI.
The main intention (from Google’s on leaked documents) was to keep people on the page longer so they could view ads longer and potentially click through those ads.
That was Google’s business model for years before AI.
I certainly believe that too but I could still always find what I needed immediately until the AI helper started appearing
Real “Unpopular Opinion” hours, but a lot of the Google AI results are honestly helpful and significantly less annoying to navigate than the links they reference.
No annoying or intrusive ads or DONATE PLEASE pop-ups or demands that I give them permission to add cookies. No miles of irrelevant fluff text. No captchas or other weird security features.
This feels like a patch on a patch on a patch, given that so much of these annoyances are a consequence of aggressive AI data harvesting and Google Adsense incentives and decades of privatization championed by Silicon Valley libertarians.
But here we are, regardless. AI answers filter a lot of that crap out
I largely agree with you. The web was already long enshittified with SEO and the browsers themselves loosening their own rules that would trim down results. Any search that’s moderately complicated often get results that are barely relevant and/or trying to sell you something. The AI summary IMO does help.
I find that most AI answers are full of errors and are really only useful for topics I know nothing about - those answers are always on point.
Excuse me while I go scrape the spackle off my driveway (did you know it was a great substitute for sidewalk deicer?).
But here we are, regardless. AI answers filter a lot of that crap out
they do not
