Wow some terrible reporting about Google's latest horrible ideas about how to distort information access in the name of "convenience" (or something):

[roadskater@mastodon.social]

@emilymbender I saw someone toot about that Tuesday afternoon, and my reaction to the article was, "So TechCrunch is rewriting Google press releases?" Not a critical thought expressed in the article. IIRC, no quotes from anyone at all, positive or negative. Just a list of supposedly useful features and enhancements.

Feh.

[tomtom@pouet.chapril.org]

@ShadSterling @romli @hamishb @emilymbender use duckduckgo and you have simple ai opt out .

But anyway all this suppose there will be something left to search for on the web. Nowadays most often than not the first 10 links returned are AI generated web site slop.
Given that this slop is now used to generate further down the drain AI sites, the untrustworthy garbage'll soon supersede 100-1 trustworthy sources.

Maybe we'll have to come back to human indexed content of a curated list of sites.

[nitrml@tyrol.social]

@emilymbender alternatively the intended meaning could be "links become an afterthought for Google, because Google doesn't think about links anymore"?

[guillotine_jones@beige.party]

@emilymbender
More rubbish from Google's Pichai.

[tiikerikani@dice.camp]

@emilymbender And here is that press release... https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/search-io-2026/

[allancavanagh@mastodon.social]

@emilymbender so… search is now Google Wave but with robots.

[6@possum.city]

@emilymbender@dair-community.social @GerhardD@olching.social eh, gmail is still biiig, i wouldn't outright block it (but it would be fair to send straight to spam lol)
most of the stuff's unneeded tho ye
there's very little that's actually needed, it's just the Default Effect + ecosystem effect

some people do need it tho, much like some people need microslop's stuff
usually when they're already invested, and used to things, it would be possible to migrate away but that would take a whole lot of effort for only moral gain

[miclgael@hachyderm.io]

@ShadSterling @romli @hamishb @emilymbender

No Shit Sherlock – Get this Extension for 🦊 Firefox (en-US)

Download No Shit Sherlock for Firefox. Filter out AI slop and social media spam from YouTube and DuckDuckGo search results

(addons.mozilla.org)

Would love to know if this works for you!

[airwhale@beige.party]

@emilymbender

It sounds better than the truth. This helps Google, the ad-company, to better shape the “experience” as it best suits their paying ad-customers.

[androcat@toot.cat]

@emilymbender
"rather than making you decide" is such a fancy way of saying "we've removed your choice".

[nicoe@mamot.fr]

@Qybat @emilymbender if no one sees the ads, the companies will stop buying adspace. That's not what google wants. So I guess they will embed the ads in the search results.

And the web will have finally evolved to be just like television. Just a bit more interactive because you'll be allowed to purchase directly what you see on screen (but probably nothing else).

[energisch_@troet.cafe]

@emilymbender this is enshittification of the next level to turn us into brainless puppets on their strings

[scottgal@hachyderm.io]

@emilymbender Is this an article of press release? Either way it's AWFUL.

[yala@degrowth.social]

@emilymbender

@energisch_

I stopped reading after "Google Search will drop users".

[energisch_@troet.cafe]

@yala fits perfectly @emilymbender

[bms48@mastodon.social]

@emilymbender I'll see you that and raise you cogent arguments about why behavioural change, not just education, are needed: https://www.asc.upenn.edu/news-events/news/largest-quantitative-synthesis-date-reveals-what-predicts-human-behavior-and-how-change-it Secondary reference from the APNIC blog about why IPv6 uptake has failed to reach certain expectations; which, ironically, is a part of the Internet relatively free from unwanted LLM scraper incursion, so far. The neat Hilbert curve based heat maps for IPv4 address spaces do not map so neatly to IPv6 because of the massively increased address space.

[bms48@mastodon.social]

@emilymbender The point that their search product was already, to use the vernacular, crap, at this point, must have been lost on them, and Sundar Pichai in particular is responsible for this, as Ed Zitron has neatly elaborated upon elsewhere.

[bms48@mastodon.social]

@emilymbender Infantalism is GAFAM's Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). The comparisons with Aldous Huxley's seminal work betray themselves.

[rogue_cells@chaos.social]

@emilymbender I want my printed encyclopedia back...

[tero@masto.ai]

@emilymbender Thank you for this summary and analysis!