Google Search Is Dying. What Comes Next Is Worse | The Walrus

As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

The people who ruined the internet

SEO experts got very rich filling the web full of garbage. But are they to blame or is Google?

Google is its own worst enemy

In its bid to push AI, it’s destroying its products and trying to kill the web too

Is Google about to destroy the web?

Google says adding more AI to its search engine will rejuvenate the internet. Others predict an apocalypse for websites. One thing is clear: this era of online history is closing.

Once Unimaginable, Publishers Are Preparing to Opt Out of Google Search

The nuclear option is gaining traction as web traffic collapses and Google refuses to negotiate with content creators

Why Google’s New AI-Saturated Search Page Will Be A Disaster

Google didn’t invent full-text search of the Internet – that honor belongs to early pioneers such as WebCrawler, Lycos and AltaVista. But for the last 25 years or so, Google has…

Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future

"For all the informational convenience the internet offers, it is deeply flawed. How can it be improved? Writer Ben Tarnoff proposes one possibility in this intriguing book, which urges the development of 'a public lane on the information superhighway.' It's worth checking out for yourself." – Seth MacFarlane Why is the internet so broken, and what could ever possibly fix it? In Internet for the People, leading tech writer Ben Tarnoff offers an answer. The internet is broken, he argues, because it is owned by private firms and run for profit. Google annihilates your privacy and Facebook amplifies right-wing propaganda because it is profitable to do so. But the internet wasn't always like this—it had to be remade for the purposes of profit maximization, through a years-long process of privatization that turned a small research network into a powerhouse of global capitalism. Tarnoff tells the story of the privatization that made the modern internet, and which set in motion the crises that consume it today. The solution to those crises is straightforward: deprivatize the internet. Deprivatization aims at creating an internet where people, and not profit, rule. It calls for shrinking the space of the market and diminishing the power of the profit motive. It calls for abolishing the walled gardens of Google, Facebook, and the other giants that dominate our digital lives and developing publicly and cooperatively owned alternatives that encode real democratic control. To build a better internet, we need to change how it is owned and organized. Not with an eye towards making markets work better, but towards making them less dominant. Not in order to create a more competitive or more rule-bound version of privatization, but to overturn it. Otherwise, a small number of executives and investors will continue to make choices on everyone’s behalf, and these choices will remain tightly bound by the demands of the market. It's time to demand an internet by, and for, the people now.

Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future

"For all the informational convenience the internet offers, it is deeply flawed. How can it be improved? Writer Ben Tarnoff proposes one possibility in this intriguing book, which urges the development of 'a public lane on the information superhighway.' It's worth checking out for yourself." – Seth MacFarlane Why is the internet so broken, and what could ever possibly fix it? In Internet for the People, leading tech writer Ben Tarnoff offers an answer. The internet is broken, he argues, because it is owned by private firms and run for profit. Google annihilates your privacy and Facebook amplifies right-wing propaganda because it is profitable to do so. But the internet wasn't always like this—it had to be remade for the purposes of profit maximization, through a years-long process of privatization that turned a small research network into a powerhouse of global capitalism. Tarnoff tells the story of the privatization that made the modern internet, and which set in motion the crises that consume it today. The solution to those crises is straightforward: deprivatize the internet. Deprivatization aims at creating an internet where people, and not profit, rule. It calls for shrinking the space of the market and diminishing the power of the profit motive. It calls for abolishing the walled gardens of Google, Facebook, and the other giants that dominate our digital lives and developing publicly and cooperatively owned alternatives that encode real democratic control. To build a better internet, we need to change how it is owned and organized. Not with an eye towards making markets work better, but towards making them less dominant. Not in order to create a more competitive or more rule-bound version of privatization, but to overturn it. Otherwise, a small number of executives and investors will continue to make choices on everyone’s behalf, and these choices will remain tightly bound by the demands of the market. It's time to demand an internet by, and for, the people now.

Google’s AI Is Destroying Search, the Internet, and Your Brain

Google’s AI Overview, which is easy to fool into stating nonsense as fact, is stopping people from finding and supporting small businesses and credible sources.

The Web Can Thrive Without Google’s Search Monopoly

Viable browsers and meaningful contributions to web standards can be sustained with more modest revenue streams, writes Alissa Cooper.

Google Search Really Has Gotten Worse, Researchers Find

"The majority of high-ranking product reviews in the result pages of commercial search engines use affiliate marketing, and significant amounts are outright SEO product review spam."

How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds

Learn how one of the biggest tech companies played a major role in the reason many people stopped using RSS feeds

Google Is Building an A.I. Fence Around the Internet It Once Championed

As Google incorporates more artificial intelligence into search, people are spending more time on Google. Some website operators are crying foul.

Google Is Building an A.I. Fence Around the Internet It Once Championed

As Google incorporates more artificial intelligence into search, people are spending more time on Google. Some website operators are crying foul.

Will Google’s AI hype man kill the BBC?

Matt Brittin spent two decades at Google, a tech company helping to destroy journalism. His appointment as leader of Britain’s biggest news organisation represents an existential threat, writes Carole Cadwalladr