Submitted 6 months ago by artifex@piefed.social to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.theverge.com/news/773928/google-open-web-rapid-decline
For months, Google has maintained that the web is “thriving,” AI isn’t tanking traffic, and its search engine is sending people to a wider variety of websites than ever. But in a court filing from last week, Google admitted that “the open web is already in rapid decline” (with regard to advertising, kinda-sorta)
Yeah it is, and it’s their fault that it is.
It’s not entirely their fault. The AI companies share a good portion of the blame too.
The AI companies are doing something different and possibly worse by stuffing all of the open sites full of AI slop and then re-training their models on said slop.
Wasn’t there some mythological figure that was doomed to eat its own excrement or something?
Well they don't get all the credit. Oh, wait, they control how much of the market? Ok, nevermind.
(the DOJ says 91%. Google somehow claims it's only 10%, to which I literally LOL'd).
That difference is so large, they must be quoting different numbers. Something like DOJ is looking at Advertising providers or search providers alone, while Google quotes a number for percentage of all websites visited or something.
This is the dub of the issue. Markets need effective competition. Without it, you get fiefdoms and serfs, and shit products. Antitrust laws have been terrible for decades. Thanks broken political thinking. Slash up the tech monopolies and not just tech will improve.
lanky_ginger@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Fucking corporate double-speak…