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

[shadsterling@mastodon.social]

@romli @hamishb @emilymbender for the AI overview that precedes any actual search results, that link doesn’t describe a persistent opt-out, only a per-search bypass with “ -ai”. Which is a start

[odd@mstdn.social]

@emilymbender the 'people acting on information' part is pretty dehumanising as well. As of humans are just a cog in their loop, rather than their product being in ours.

[tommi@pan.rent]

@emilymbender

SEO is going to be so dead.

To me, it’s Search Engines Ostracism now.

[alsvha@sunny.garden]

@emilymbender Google will not be satisfied until they control information and people are stuck on their landing page with their version of information.

It's been a ongoing trend to pull more and more into their page from sources and now even rewrite it.

[lcwander@toot.community]

@hamishb @emilymbender the best opt-out mode is using another search engine. Google search enshittification has been going on for at least 5 years. At this point it is just masochism to use it.

[setok@attractive.space]

@emilymbender yeah, even for someone who is pro-tech and interested in AI developments, this @TechCrunch piece read like a press release. It was journalistically extremely weak to the point I felt dumber for reading it.

[eurospoofer@mastodon.social]

@emilymbender 2.5 billion users a month they claim.
Having an AI summary forced into every search doesn't make the searcher a user of the tech. How many people simply ignore the summary?

[gerhardd@olching.social]

@emilymbender The good news: nobody needs #google. I've blocked all their MTAs, and resisted using their apps for quite some time. No problems so far.

[cockburn@mastodon.moule.world]

@emilymbender google is so unreliable now, it's time for them to lose their worldwide use of "google" as a verb.

[sharksonaplane@mastodon.sandwich.net]

@emilymbender Exactly!

I understand that business value propositions change over time, but going from "we disrupted search by making a simple interface" to "we ruptured search by making our simple interface complicated (and terrible)" is. well, it's certainly. a choice.

[turre@mementomori.social]

@emilymbender
Yeah, if somebody is still using Google Search, now is the time to get off it. There are other search engines out there.

[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.