Which is such a shortsighted move because as soon as all the news portals close shop Google’s scraper will have nothing relevant to summarize and is gonna be shit.
News outlets in crisis mode as Google-led AI search push crushes website traffic
Submitted 1 day ago by mesamunefire@piefed.social to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
ckmnstr@lemmy.world 1 day ago
limer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Nothing is stopping the AI summaries from using social media as the primary source
ckmnstr@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Can’t wait for Google to AI-summarize AI-generated social media posts for artificial Google users created to hike ad prices. It’s gonna be wild
atrielienz@lemmy.world 1 day ago
So social media are news outlets now. Good. Glad we cleared that up.
atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
That’s when Google will buy what ever is left of Condé Nast or Buzzfeed at bottom dollar and start using more AI to shit out “news”.
umbrella@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
they will be using that opportunity to make up the truth they want.
flop_leash_973@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
With what passes for news these days at most outlets I can’t say I feel too bad for them that someone else beat them at their own game of feeding the masses surface level doom scrolling slop for engagement and ad impressions.
Hell, a large chunk of the junk being put out by these same outlets is trash written by the AI solutions they are paying for. Probably solutions from the likes of Google that is giving it to them at both ends.
Once the snake finishes eating its own tail maybe the good reporters will still have somewhere that pays them for the good work they do.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 14 hours ago
Where does one pay for quality news?
f4f4f4f4f4f4f4f4@sopuli.xyz 7 hours ago
SpaceCheeseWizard@lemmy.zip 7 hours ago
PBS is a good option too.
CandleTiger@programming.dev 7 hours ago
ernest314@lemmy.zip 14 hours ago
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 6 hours ago
Yeah, they did it to themselves buying into the rage bait bullshit they’ve been doing for years.
fodor@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
One of the problems that the major news outlets have is that they repeat each other. It’s not merely an issue of AI compiling news stories, but that on top of the fact that all of these newspapers are doing hardly any research. For example, if you live in a town that’s not too large, there might only be one local paper, and they might send out reporters to local events. Obviously you would then go to that newspaper if you wanted to learn about local events, because they are adding explicit value.
But if you’re trying to read about national politics, a lot of the information is going to be the same in a lot of the newspapers. Which means nobody cares about the newspaper itself. And this is a creation of the newspaper’s own decision making over the past few decades.
realitista@lemm.ee 1 day ago
I’d say their decision making was mostly forced by their drop in ad revenue and subscriptions forced by the internet.
Though I do wish that someone would make a Spotify for news so that I could pay once and get access to all of them and at least give them 10 cents per article or something, because I will never pay the subscription cost any are asking.
As much as I’d like to support them, the price to utility ratio is way the fuck off at the prices they ask now.
Hugin@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
It’s also the speed of news now. When you had a edition a day in print there was time to do research.
Now with instant publishing on the web it’s more important to get the basic story out fast. With the hope it’s the one that sites like reddit pickup.
insomniac20k@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
That’s kinda what Apple News+ is but stuck in their walled garden.
boughtmysoul@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Watch his recent interview with Nilay Patel from The Verge. Watching him dance around questions about this was painful.
This man only cares about increasing Alphabet stock prices to ensure as large a golden parachute as possible on the way out.
callouscomic@lemm.ee 6 hours ago
You described all executives everywhere.
Zetta@mander.xyz 1 day ago
This man only cares about increasing Alphabet stock prices to ensure as large a golden parachute as possible on the way out.
This Is literally his legal obligation, welcome to capitalism
pupbiru@aussie.zone 6 hours ago
there are many ways to fulfil this “obligation”… i’d argue that he’s increasing alphabet stock price in the short term but what the fuck is going to happen when the sources all go out of business?
… oh right they’re going to become a news monopoly… cool cool cool
shalafi@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
No, making money is not a legal obligation. CEO at my last job told the board, two years in a row, that intended to lose money so we could invest in our people and tech. They cheered him.
CosmoNova@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The sad part is this is actually his job description and Alphabet could get sued by shareholders if he didn‘t do exactly that. The stock market needs to be criminalized, not glorified as the one truth like it‘s treated right now.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 1 day ago
AI stands for Ambitious Indian
(Just plagiarizing the joke about that company that went bankrupt)
AlecSadler@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Wouldn’t this kill their ad revenue? Which is like…most of their revenue?
3abas@lemm.ee 1 day ago
Ad supported articles is a dead industry, Google realizes this better than anyone. People don’t go to the source anymore to answer curiosities, why would you read a whole article to answer a simple question when AI gives you the answer directly?
AlecSadler@sh.itjust.works 22 hours ago
I meant why would people advertise on Google if it won’t convert to clicks anymore?
Jhex@lemmy.world 1 day ago
why would you read a whole article to answer a simple question when AI gives you the answer directly?
context?, nuance?, verifying the AI slop?
jjlinux@lemmy.ml 14 hours ago
Glad this is happening. These are the same news outlets that provide Google with your information and pay Google for ads.
They can all bust for all I care.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 1 day ago
No! Pushing AI generated garbage is our job!
Reverendender@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
“Every day, we send billions of clicks to websites, and connecting people to the web continues to be a priority,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement. “New experiences like AI Overviews and AI Mode enhance Search and expand the types of questions people can ask, which creates new opportunities for content to be discovered.”
They followed up with: “You can totally trust me, and everything I just said. I am absolutely definitely not lying.”
SplashJackson@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Lol maybe they shouldn’t have covered up the genocide in Gaza
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 1 day ago
With a link to NYPost lol
MyOpinion@lemmy.today 1 day ago
Google wants it all this time. No traffic for anyone but them after they steal all your content.
A7thStone@lemmy.world 1 day ago
They saw what AOL tried to do and decided they can make it work.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 1 day ago
AOL? Like the company that was always giving away those free coasters and frisbees?
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
Oh no… Not the major news outlets, how ever will we cope. Let them burn.
Empricorn@feddit.nl 1 day ago
I’m about as anti-corporation a person as you’ll find, but I don’t think we should be cheering the death of the Free Press. I know it’s edgy to say “it’s already here” , but that’s just not accurate. When true journalists are gone, the only thing left will be propaganda.
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
You think the billionaire owned press is free? Some smaller independents may deserve support but that isn’t major companies.
coolmojo@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Then how would I know the 10 surprising things I can do to be healthier? /s
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
I am sure ChatGPT can make something up for you each day
aaron@infosec.pub 1 day ago
Most news sites ask me to consent to google tracking or pay, neither of which am I prepared to do in almost all cases. Why I do everything I can to avoid google tracking shouldn’t need explaining. The idea that I will pay to be propagandised is 20th century.
Therobohour@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Good. Ai was a terrble idea for searches and Google needs to be broken up
deaf_fish@midwest.social 1 day ago
I hate to tell you this but I don’t think the AI is going down. I think Google could body all news organizations if it needed to.
Therobohour@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
They said the same thing about standard oil
FourWaveforms@lemm.ee 1 day ago
they seem to be walking that back somewhat, moving it to its own tab.
shiroininja@lemmy.world 1 day ago
People really trust it? Like it’s been so wrong on things for me, I automatically skip to search results past it. Why bother anymore
lepinkainen@lemmy.world 1 day ago
People on Twitter regularly go “@grok is this true” to everything and trust the AI to be correct.
The same AI that said the fresh photo of National Guard members sleeping on the floor was from 2021…
Jhex@lemmy.world 1 day ago
people still on twitter are complete, brain washed idiots… so this behaviour tracks
shadowfax13@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
google search has been trash even before ai, i believe its one of the reasons chatgpt got so much traction. first 2 pages are just generic slop with paywalled or ad-infested content.
i switched to kagi 2 years ago and its has relevant results on page 1 that i won’t get in google even after 10s of pages. plus i don’t bombed with ads for that term for weeks.
sprite0@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
they purposefully fucked yup they search so people would have to click more pages to find their answer, giving google a chance to display more ads.
teamevil@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I use extensions to block AI results… having to skip past them is annoying
Tillman@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I still find it weird that people don’t use Kagi for search. At least start page or ddg. Google hasn’t been useful for five ish years and admitted in court that they damaged results to prop up ads.
realitista@lemm.ee 1 day ago
I used Kagi for a few months when other engines failed. It did come through a few times. But paying $10 a month to get one extra good search result per month was a hard sell for me. If they offered a much much smaller package of lime 20-50 searches per month or just pay as you go, I’d definitely be in.
SpicyColdFartChamber@lemm.ee 1 day ago
Yup, I’ve been seeing more and more people straight use AI results to support their arguments.
BigTrout75@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Depends on what it is. As a reference lookup for a simple programming function and with an example, it’s been a game changer.
flop_leash_973@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Yeah, asking an LLM simple stuff that Google used to just give you at the top of the search before the AI Overview was a thing, like how old is X celebrity or for a high level example of code, or as a stupidly complex spell checker it is pretty good.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
I know several people in my community who confidently trust it for search. they are not stupid people… but sometimes I question their choices