Until Google realizes normal.people would rather use this than take part in their AI search, and block usage of it outside of businesses.
“Normal people”, as in 99% of people, will not bother editing the URL… most of them don’t even know what a URL is. They’ll just keep using whatever search window they get in their “internet” (browser).
However, Google would rather scrapers and people with ad blockers not make them waste money on AI when they can’t recoup them.
Honestly. People moved to Google back in the day. If a search engine gets enough traction for being superior, the adoption will start. Slowly first, but it worked before. I see no reason why it wouldn’t happen again.
The people that use Google today did not move to Google back then. They came along after Google conquored the browser market.
Just like way back when, “The Internet” was Internet Explorer, today it’s Chrome. And until we can convince people to abandon that, then it’s an up-a-sheer-cliff battle.
The Internet today is propped up by the people who do not lament that it has turned into 5 websites in a trench coat, but who actively kick up a fit at the idea that it could or should be anything more varied or complicated than that.
AI seems to be the “I don’t need to think that much” measure of superiority this year… and sincerely, it’s likely here to stay. We will see different AIs with different levels of “no need to think” in different areas, but getting a ready made easy and simple answer, no matter how preposterous, has been the goal for a large part of the population since basically forever.
That’s what’s really confusing me: why add an expensive feature, that obviously doesn’t work and even in the best case adds only minor improvements?
I mean, it’s not another option like with Bing. It’s the default. Every stupid little search will take up AI resources. For what? Market cap?
Rather market penetration among the gullible, which leads to more ad impressions, which lead to ad income, which leads to market cap.
I bet they have an alternative plan in the back burner to slash that AI the moment they see it reduce ad income in their A/B testing… but right now the AI buzzword is strong in the air, it’s 2024’s main attractor for the most ad-targetable customers.
My guess is that google has been losing the public perception of an innovative company, and started to be felt as a big stable and slow moving one instead, and they’re trying so desperately to take back the previous public perception. They’re seeing the ai hype and the investment microsoft is doing on it. They probably also fear that bing might break their monopoly, and want to fully integrate some ai in their product, to prevent the competition from arising and passing the image of an innovative company.
Maybe the “obviously doesn’t work” and “adds only minor improvements” things are just your personal experience, and for other people it is working and it adds significant improvements.
Google is in competition with other search engines, more now than it’s been in many years. So maybe they’re adding new features like this because it actually does improve the competitiveness of their search engine.
Degoogle instead.
I love seeing this same article rewritten and reposted all over Lemmy, such great engaging content /s
There are browser userscripts out there now that do this automatically.
What is this reporting? The tone sounds like a personal Twitter post.
which Google recently launched as a way to search the web without Google’s alpha-quality AI junk. It’s actually pretty nice, showing only the traditional 10 blue links, giving you a clean (well, other than the ads), uncluttered results page that looks like it’s from 2011.
