The AIpocalypse is here for websites as search referrals plunge

Google AI Overviews and other AI search services appear to be starving the hand that fed them. Google's AI-generated summaries of web pages, officially released in May 2024, show up atop its search results pages so search users don't have to click through to the source website. A year later, enterprise AI analytics biz …

[ExampleOne]

If the crawling is so problematic, and easily attributable, set up a robots.txt and take a DMCA case if they continue to crawl.

Given what the courts have ruled counts as an”effective” security measure, this should be a fairly straightforward case.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

You live in dreamland. Not the Alice style, more one of the various Rick & Morty styles.

[Joe W]

While I like the idea, so far it seems that those techbro companies are allowed whatever, with clear disregard for all laws (copyright and all). So .. no.

But should anybody illegally stream a single song...

[TheMaskedMan]

"If the crawling is so problematic, and easily attributable, set up a robots.txt and take a DMCA case if they continue to crawl."

This. But I'd also be looking to add something akin to NOINDEX - NOAI maybe - to the headers, and a clear, human readable "not for use by AI" in every page footer.

That should make your position clear, and DMCA cases much easier. Some kind of cease and desire injunction might also be in order.

Personally, I don't care if the bots crawl my sites for training purposes. But this particular application of the resulting AI is a bit much. Note it's the application rather than the AI per se that I object to.

The obvious solution is for everyone to immediately add NOINDEX to every page of their site; Google will have to remove every page on the web from their index, and become irrelevant over night. But nobody is going to do that, because they still need traffic from Google.

Looks like the days of making web sites for fun and profit are nearly over.

[Jamie Jones]

robots.txt, nofollow, noindex... All ignored by the majority of these robots these days. They generally spoof the browser agent to look plausible, and use various different IP addresses from all over the world.

Fine for static sites, but problematic when multiple agents are trying to grab every git commit on a repo.

And some of them I've blocked (by ASN) months ago, and they still try. This is the last entry in my "blocked" log:

Sun Jun 22 19:03:44 2025 | 94.74.125.251 | ecs-94-74-125-251.compute.hwclouds-dns.com | 42794 | HK | Hong Kong | Hong Kong | AS136907 | HUAWEI CLOUDS | 94.74.120.0/21 | 94.74.64.0/18 | git.freebsd.catflap.org | GET /src/diff/?id=d86f022e79862e9d91be80a806a4b011359d6cc8 HTTP/2.0 | 403/403 | text/html | 330 | 1425 | - / 1 | TLSv1.3 | Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/120.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 | zh-CN | SG | Singapore

How would you suggest dealing with that in a proper way?

[Anonymous Coward]

Proof of work can be alternative, the scale of scrapers would make it prohibitive if even a fraction of sites start using it

https://www.reddit.com/r/cryptography/comments/1ddp72m/proof_of_work_to_combat_bots_on_social_media/

[John Robson]

Oh goody, even more wasted electricity.

[Anonymous Coward]

This sort of thing has been proposed any number of times.

First I remember was a sort of "digital stamp" for email that cost a fair amount of CPU time to compute and attach.

The reddit post you link to is by a deleted account (!), and the replies have many explanations of why this idea isn't workable in real world implementations.

Simplifying: Won't solve the problem and makes the user experience worse, well done.

[Jamie Jones]

Well yeah, that becomes the solution many go for, but I was replying to the post that said to "just use "noindex" and robots.txt etc. and everything will be ok"

I don't blame people for resorting to using these types of filters, but it is annoying me when you're working in a console, and want to Google something with "w3m" only for the destination site to fail because I don't have JavaScript.

[Anonymous Coward]

Move your site to the real dark web?

[Sudosu]

...but then people will need a light to read it!

[Zolko]

khtml -vs- Gecko

AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome

wait ... While Apple WebKit and Chrome are indeed based on KDE's KHTML, but Gecko is Firefox's html engine, so Apple WebKit it's not like Gecko at all

How would you suggest dealing with that in a proper way?

you should contact Huawei to tell them to correct such unforgivable mis-information.

[doublelayer]

Re: khtml -vs- Gecko

That's how user agents work. It's a mess of annoying cludges from history. That's why pretty much everybody's starts with "Mozilla/5.0". Sometimes, I think we'd be better off if we decided to simply discontinue using the user agent altogether. It had a point, the point is broken, just hand out the document for the URI requested.

Their point, however, was that the bot did not decide to identify itself as one. The bot is masquerading as a browser, at least by user agent.

[Jamie Jones]

Re: khtml -vs- Gecko

Google has a proposal to replace user-agent .. with extra headers! "client hints".

chrome sends them already:

https://www.whatismybrowser.com/detect/client-hints/

[Jamie Jones]

Re: khtml -vs- Gecko

Google has made a suggestion to replace User-Agent... with more headers! Client-hints: (CH-*)

Chrome already sends them, in addition to user-agent.

https://www.whatismybrowser.com/detect/client-hints/

[Jamie Jones]

Re: khtml -vs- Gecko

"you should contact Huawei to tell them to correct such unforgivable mis-information"

As "doublelayer" pointed out, that abomination is used by "valid" browsers.

I just checked chrome, and it "legitimately" reports the tag-soup "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; CrOS x86_64 14541.0.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/138.0.0.0 Safari/537.36"

Still, complaining to a bot company that their bot doesn't spoof a real browser accurately enough is a novel approach! :-)

Not my downvote!

[The Sprocket]

"The obvious solution is for everyone to immediately add NOINDEX to every page of their site; Google will have to remove every page on the web from their index, and become irrelevant over night. But nobody is going to do that, because they still need traffic from Google."

I like that very much, but as you aptly pointed out, a majority of businesses still rely on Google traffic. But then there are those that don't. Those would be consultants or professional businesses who have detailed websites for potentially new clients who have been referred, often by colleagues, and use the website to confirmation. They did NOT arrive at said site via a Google search, but believe it or not, an url on a business card. Out of my last 50 clients I've created and designed sites for, around 30 or so were like that. They just didn't give a shit about 'Google search placement' or Google itself. Most of their business connections and activities run behind the curtain, out of sight of the internet. I suppose if these people were THAT pissed about the scraping of AI, they could easily opt for NOINDEX.

[AVR]

Compliance with robots.txt is voluntary, not legally enforced. There's no good basis to sue just because someone ignored it.

[veti]

Even if robots.txt was legally enforceable, maybe you actually want people to be able to discover the page by search.

[The Empororer Fabulous]

Because robots.txt is only a "please, sir, do not do" at best?

[Mike_R]

Skip "AI" results in firefox

look up "firefox udm" and use "Search" in the tool-bar.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/udm14/

HTH

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

Or block class "bzXtMb M8OgIe dRpWwb" in your ad blocker

[RuffianXion]

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

Or just don't use Google

[klh]

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

DDG also added this crap, because apparently people like it. At least you can turn it off though.

[The man with a spanner]

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

"apparently people like it"

There is no "apparantly" about it. Judging from the article people like the AI summary and this is satisfying them so they don't search further.

Maybe Google has made an unforced error here - a case of the cannibals eating their cook.

[nobody who matters]

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

Unfortunately, whenever I try a Google search on a subject that I already know about, I find the AI summary is invariable full of errors. Or just plain wrong in its entirety.

Either way it isn't reliable enough to be worth a fig tbh. The clueless and the gullible lap it up, and will then wonder why they are getting everything wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

"full of errors. Or just plain wrong in its entirety."

Recently a 1930s UK crime novel which had been digitised on entering the public domain had the phrase "spin a yam" (multiply with variations.)

A fairly obvious OCR error YAM for YARN I supposed as r+n resembles m in many typfaces.

Still it might have been a common humorous phrase when the book was written based on the deliberate misreading. Foolishly I tried searching from the e-reader application which defaults to Google which gave this "authoritative" AI^† response without any substantiating evidence. (No relevant non-AI responses.)

"Spin a yam" is an idiom that means to tell a long, elaborate, and perhaps unbelievable story, often to entertain or deceive.

With the small footnote disclaimer _{AI responses may include mistakes}.

"Caution: All AI responses are a confabulation of your queries and randomly selected text sequences trawled from the internet " would be more accurate.

_{† Authoritative AI would have to be the ultimate oxymoron with bugger all oxy.}

[veti]

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

AI: spinning authoritative yams since 2024.

[NXM]

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

A clear case of Keming then!

[Giles C]

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

The number of trade vans I see where the sign writer has made no effort to consider kerning is huge, There used to be one who lived round the corner not only did the name feature a rn pairing too close together they had put silver lettering on a gray vehicle. So if you could make out the writing, then you probably got the name wrong.

I always thought that the purpose of having a sign written van was so that people would see it and then call you up and offer you work?

[AndrueC]

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

I always thought that the point of writing on the front of an appliance was to help you operate it. But then I bought an LG washing machine that has a dark brown body with the programmes written in black ink. I've always imagined it to have been the brainchild of some artistic type in the marketing department. 'Let's not sully our lovely brown design with anything crass like text'.

[I am the liquor]

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

I think you coined the new idiom for what LLMs do. "Hallucination" never seemed like an accurate description, and "confabulation" is too esoteric; "spinning a yam" is nonsensical to the perfect degree.

[The Sprocket]

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

That is so true. My experience as well.

[hedgie]

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

"AI" is the perfect illustration of the GIGO principle. Gotta love how the model is tainted enough to even get a basic summary so horribly wrong.

[Richard 12]

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

It's also blatantly illegal in most of the world under the various abuse of monopoly laws.

Unfortunately, the entire web will have collapsed before the first judgements, let alone the appeals.

[Sudosu]

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

There's no live people on the internet anymore anyway.

Its bots....all the way down.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

So, it's apparent then? "Apparent" means it's "visible".

[hoola]

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

What is scary is that people just accept the AI summary as the definitive answer.

I don't use it as a matter of principal but it is a laugh reading it and seeing how close (or removed) from reality it is.

Too many people just don't get the basic principal that AI is not some magical solution that "knows" the answer. It has got the answer from scraping web sites for material then simply applying some filters to decide what is the most likely.

Everything to do with AI should carry a warning like tobacco "This result has generated by AI and as such as a load of bollocks"

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

"What is scary is that people just accept the AI summary as the definitive answer."

We're living in a post-truth epoch: Any answer is a good answer, more so if it is convenient.

[Albert Coates]

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

You consistently spell "principle" as "principal." Your final sentence reads in part: "This result has generated by AI", and yet you get 13 upvotes. Can none of your fans spell or even recognise a load of patent bollocks? Are *you* a bot?

[Persona]

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

What is scary is that people just accept the AI summary as the definitive answer

They have long ago learnt that if it's on the internet it must be true ... provided it supports their prejudices. The real fun starts when the AI gets "better" and tailors each answer to match the viewers personal prejudices.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

Now you wrote it several times..

It's "principle".

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

Nah, AI hasn't reached the "enshittification" phase yet.

Before long we'll have paywalls on the output..."click here to subscribe and see the rest of the output".

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

It's already in the small print of the ads for the latest Samsung shiny... "some AI options require Samsung account and subscription"

('Gemini Advance')

[The Sprocket]

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

Correct—AI hasn't—still early days, but the web certainly has reached the "enshittification" phase.

[Zolko]

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

because apparently people like it

I don't think that 99% of the people even noticed, and simply leave the defaults. So no, probably nobody actively likes it, people think this is the new "normal" and leave it at that. Heck, I see many people with the default desktop background wallpaper ! They don't seem to know that it can be changed

[Not Yb]

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

duckduckgo doesn't seem to generate the AI summary by default, though it's easy enough to ask it for one.

[Headley_Grange]

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

In Mac FF you can just create a custom search in FF/settings/search with the following string

https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14

In Mac Safari you need an extension. I use one called CSE == customize search engine and use the same string above.

All works fine so far. I've not tried to do it with mobile but I don't do much browsing on my phone.

[Albert Coates]

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

"I don't do much browsing on my phone."

More like swipe right, then

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

Thing is, for quite a few open source libraries the AI summary is actually a lot better than whatever docs the devs have time to knock together. Not least because it also references open source projects that use the library and works out what they're doing with it.

Pretty much the only time I use an LLM but I couldn't do my job without some of the docs it created from practically nothing.

[LBJsPNS]

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

But, but, Steven Vaughan-Nichols told me Firefox is dead on this very website! I'm sure there's a way to do this on Chrome, right?

Right?

Hello? This thing on?

[cbrisuda]

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

In fact, yes there are a number of ways to do it. There’s a browser extension dedicated to this purpose, other extensions that use regex for page redirecting, and settings in search you can modify. Twenty seconds of web searching yielded that information.

[OhForF']

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

>Twenty seconds of web searching yielded that information.<

How long took verifying the result was not an AI hallucination?

[demon driver]

This AI problem is already (at least) stage 2 of enshittification...

... where part of stage 1 was websites trying to suppress even the most trivial bits of content being spelled out in search results so that they can harvest more clicks. Like they also stopped linking to other websites just because they might lose visitors before they otherwise would be done clicking around. Both already was the beginning of the end of the web as we (well, some of us) once knew it...

It's funny that search engine AI is now attacking the state of the web after the ad-commercialisation which was the first great wave set out to kill web functionality and usability, i.e. the core of the web.

Of course, because this world is built on commerce and commerce alone, this attack in itself is just a next stage commercialisation attempt, another fun part of which is that its principle is to damage what it lives off. A classic parasitisation process.

[Kurgan]

Re: This AI problem is already (at least) stage 2 of enshittification...

The whole AI mess is clearly a major breakthrough in enshittification. It's probably the singularity of enshittification.

[klh]

Re: This AI problem is already (at least) stage 2 of enshittification...

Maybe it will all collapse on itself and we'll get back to the good old web (wishful thinking, I know)

[HuBo]

Re: This AI problem is already (at least) stage 2 of enshittification...

Yeah, sounds like search is engaging in a classic short-sighted evolution towards optimal virulence by castrating parasites (metaphorically) that could turn it right into a living dead IT version of Chesapeake Bay zombie crabs ...

Gotta pick and choose 'em beans just right you know ... with "cocoa" we get the delicious aromas and flavors of chocolate, butt "cacao" yields naught but the stinkers of stage 2+ enshitification, iiuc!

[PB90210]

Re: This AI problem is already (at least) stage 2 of enshittification...

"Maybe it will all collapse on itself and we'll get back to the good old web (wishful thinking, I know)"

When AOL was king!

[Albert Coates]

Re: This AI problem is already (at least) stage 2 of enshittification...

"When AOL was king!"

RIP AOL TimeWarner (not)*

*Bwahaha, Compaq/HP merger ring any bells?

[Pirate Peter]

Re: This AI problem is already (at least) stage 2 of enshittification...

needs to make like the Oozlum Bird ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oozlum_bird )

AI is already flying in ever decreasing circles as it consumes more and more AI generated crap treating it as valid input

"The oozlum bird, also spelled ouzelum, is a legendary creature found in Australian and British folk tales and legends. Some versions have it that, when startled, the bird will take off and fly around in ever-decreasing circles until it manages to fly up its own backside, disappearing completely, which adds to its rarity"

[untrained_eye_of_newt]

Re: This AI problem is already (at least) stage 2 of enshittification...

this year the smashing conference is now focused on AI oriented UI (vs hiring design firms and having websites anymore)

[Someone Else]

Re: This AI problem is already (at least) stage 2 of enshittification...

Oh, great! We, as an "industry", have suddenly figured out a way to make the average web programmer look good.

What.

Have.

We.

Done?

[Tron]

Re: This AI problem is already (at least) stage 2 of enshittification...

This is not as bad as it seems.

Web sites cost money per user access (bandwidth). Users who only need to see a summary are now not going further than Google Search. If they did, their access would be superficial, just to check something, with no benefit to the website. So Google is paying for the bandwidth use of superficial users, but those who want more are still going to the website. This may be one of the few benefits of 'AI'.

Superficial users will also not look at adverts. They want one piece of info. So advertisers will now only be paying for visits by users who dwell on the site.

[Mr. Flibble]

Re: This AI problem is already (at least) stage 2 of enshittification...

oooh, text takes up sooo much bandwidth....

[Anonymous Coward]

Eat the hand that feeds it

Google is eating the goose that laid the golden eggs.

We are entering the final stages of the total value extraction of the ecosystem: clear cutting the forest.

[billdehaan]

Be careful what you wish for

In 2023, Canada enacted the Online News Act. If it sounds Orwellian, good. The government decreed that major search engines should pay the news sites that they link to.

To no one's surprise, except the Canadian government and the news sites themselves,, Google wasn't interested in paying sites that they were giving publicity to, but if they had to, they'd just not link to them. So, they simply removed the links to those news sites.

Even less surprising, the smaller news outlets suddenly found their traffic drop by as much as 90%. It turns out demanding that big search engines pay for the right to link to you isn't really a compelling argument when there are literally millions of other news sites that they can just as easily link to for free.

[Dan 55]

Re: Be careful what you wish for

Google News stopped being useful for a while now, that's why there are other news aggregators, free and paid for, which are becoming more popular.

[Anna Nymous]

Re: Be careful what you wish for

> Google wasn't interested in paying sites that they were giving publicity to

That's an interesting take on what happened. This particular wording makes it seem like we should all be happy to merely "work for exposure" rather than for currency... that everyone should be delighted to be featured on google's front page because of the infinite benevolence of that company. Observe how well this feudal lord treats its peasants, it gives them 'exposure', free publicity. Publicity doesn't pay the bills, buckaroo!

The reason for that act was not about _linking_ to news sites. It was about google demanding that it could use content from those news sites on its own page, so that click-throughs to the news site didn't even happen. It was about google asking for free stuff.

_Another_ interpretation one could come up with is that google deliberately de-prioritized those sites to 'teach them a lesson'.

But now I'm being "mean", aren't I? Google would never pull dirty tricks like that. Their search results are totally, completely organic and objective and not influenced by humans _at all_.

The point here is not that news sites need google. The point here is that google is your new daddy, and you'll bloody well do what it says you'll do, or else...

What this tells you that there is too much power in the hands of a single entity. Canada should have gone further and blocked google wholesale.

[doublelayer]

Re: Be careful what you wish for

And you've gone too far the other way. The law and the politicians who called for it, both the Canadian version and the Australian version which was almost the same, specifically said that they had to do something about the problems of linking and quoting. If they had just stopped at quoting, maybe they'd have had a point, but they called out linking from Google and large social media as a problem requiring compensation. They were surprised when the response to a law that was passed because linking is bad was that the people they spent months saying should stop linking or pay for doing so decided to stop linking.

The problem was stronger on the social media side, where people, including the social media companies themselves, had an incentive to copy the entire text of a news article and put it on that network so people stayed there instead of going to the paper's website. Sometimes, to try to make their act less obviously illegal, they'd only copy the first four paragraphs, thus removing important context without cutting it too short that anyone was motivated to leave. Obvious copyright violation though that is, I can see why someone might decide another law is needed to do something about it. It is, as you will have noticed, entirely separate and opposite to linking, which would be the good thing they could do instead, and that's what many search engines were already doing, quoting a couple, possibly cut off, sentences for context but requiring people go to the site to read the whole thing.

And yet, the laws were written so badly that the only way to interpret them was that linking was the problem. What the backers of the laws wanted was to take money from tech and give it to newspapers, and that's why they included linking, but the result is that the law effectively tells you that including large newspapers in search results is a bad thing and you shouldn't do it.

[Decay]

Re: Be careful what you wish for

You're absolutely right. The legislation was framed so poorly that it treated linking, arguably the most constructive and least intrusive aspect of content sharing, as something that required control or compensation. Unsurprisingly, the result hasn't been improved funding for journalism or better copyright protection, but rather a significant reduction in access to diverse sources.

In my own case, the impact was immediate. YouTube on my Nvidia Shield effectively stopped showing international news content. What now dominates the feed is over 90% CBC, a state-funded broadcaster whose editorial tone often leans heavily into “The Government is great” and “Scandal? What scandal?” territory. That might be tolerable if it were one voice among many, but it's increasingly the only voice presented.

The legislation didn’t address the actual issue, full content copying on social platforms. Instead, it targeted linking, which is how most users discover and access journalism in the first place. The result has been a narrowing of public discourse and the emergence of a curated, one-sided news environment, which is the opposite of what a healthy democratic media landscape should look like. And the tinfoil hat wearing part of me suspects that was by design by the Canadian Government.

[hedgie]

Re: Be careful what you wish for

These companies just take and take. And to some level, anyone creating anything has to play their game somewhat.

[Dan 55]

Re: Be careful what you wish for

Google pulled the same stunt in Spain. It took seven years for Spanish media to return to Google News and yes, in the end they did end up paying for using their content.

[nobody who matters]

Re: Be careful what you wish for

<...."It was about google asking for free stuff.".....>

Google didn't ask. They simply took with neither a please nor a thank-you (hardly surprising as I am pretty convinced that neither term exists in the vocabulary of anyone at Google. . . . or indeed at most large tech companies).

[Sudosu]

Re: Be careful what you wish for

I remember trying to figure out why all the news agencies were so mad that they were being linked to by all the big tech companies.

To me it sounded like they were getting free marketing, at least from what was being reported at the time.

I was thinking maybe they (Google, Facebook et al) were stealing and posting the content from the news sites, but that was not the case?

Maybe they were being charged for the links?

EDIT: OK, after reading some more posts it was a blend of stealing content and linking. It appears that the legislation should have left the linking and blocked the content theft but killed it all.

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps Gemini could point Google's leadership to the fox and rabbit game. Perhaps a light bulb will go off. But I doubt it.

[Eecahmap]

Weird AI

I read this as "Alpocalypse" and wondered what Mr. Yankovic was up to these days.

[Ace2]

Re: Weird AI

Still touring! Taking the kids to see him in July

[Sudosu]

Re: Weird AI

"Its All About the Pentiums" is still one of my favs...it rocks!

PS - and yes I do still think my Commodore 64 is pretty neato

[Bill Gray]

Re: Weird AI(po)

I read it as "Alpo-calypse" and wondered if dog food was the subject.

Fonts in which lowercase L, uppercase i, and/or the digit 1 appear identical are the work of Satan. As I age, the number of such fonts is increasing.

[imanidiot]

Re: Weird AI(po)

sans-serif fonts are all the rage these days and for the life of me I still cannot figure out why. I've had to do multiple "cyber security" trainings (and those stupid phising test emails) for work (both my employer and our customers) where they explain you have to be really careful when reading email addresses because the l, I and 1 may look very similar and my immediate thought was: Wouldn't have that problem if you chose a frigging serif font to display those email addresses. Makes reading easier too. But no, we're stuck with stupid sans-serif fonts because some numbnuts decided for us that this is what it should be. Can't change it either as far as I can tell (certainly not on the work lappy)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Weird AI(po)

Research (no citation, sorry) has yielded that serif fonts are easier to read on paper, and sans-serif fonts are easier to read on a screen.

And then of course there is fashion. Nobody in 2025 would take a website using "Times New Roman" as their typeface serious (unless they use it for historical reasons).

[imanidiot]

Re: Weird AI(po)

Sans fonts were easier to read on a screen AT LOW RESOLUTION. And that is very important distinctions. With modern 1080p and higher screens, the advantage of sans fonts disappears and Serif fonts becomes easier to read again even on screens.

"Nobody in 2025 would take a website using "Times New Roman" as their typeface serious (unless they use it for historical reasons)."

Maybe I'm weird but I see no reason why I shouldn't take it seriously. Times New Roman is still a perfectly fine font.

[Bill Gray]

Re: Weird AI(po)

Nobody in 2025 would take a website using "Times New Roman" as their typeface serious

Explain, please?

On my admittedly text-heavy site, I generally just use the default font [0] (example here). The default serif font varies among browsers and OSes, but Times New Roman appears to be a common choice.

I suppose there may be those who figure such sites haven't kept up with current trends, and they are arguably correct. But that's not the same as not taking the site seriously.

[0] Come to think of it, I made a rare exception on that page. I knew some users would find the whole thing daunting, so I wanted to show the words "Don't Panic!" in large, friendly letters. The font I chose seemed suitable for that purpose, at least to me.

[Someone Else]

Re: Weird AI(po)

Fonts in which lowercase L, uppercase i, and/or the digit 1 appear identical are the work of Satan. As I age, the number of such fonts is increasing.

And then, if you live in Illinois (in the USA), and use its 3-letter abbreviation....

[PeterM42]

Re: Weird AI

Font failure!

[Androgynous Cow Herd]

Re: Weird AI

Pet peeve...

Calling something a "Font" when it is actually a "typeface"

[Omnipresent]

pretty simple formula

If the point of AI is to overwhelm the internet and funnel everything through google it's working. Unfortunately, that turns the internet into a sales conference for influencers and "others". The internet is simply not useful for information any more. It has, in fact, been weaponized against the world by design.

[Roland6]

Re: pretty simple formula

>The internet is simply not useful for information any more.

The issue isn't that "The Internet" isn't useful any more, its just that you now have to battle through layers of rubbish and misdirection unless you know a source and so can go directly to it.

Google is effectively killing itself, if people don't scan at least the first page of search results and visit a few likely looking websites then why pay to advertise on the Internet?

[Omnipresent]

Re: pretty simple formula

The simplest response is often the most effective. Simple actions have a fractal like response. That is happening here. Even your old forums are now targeting and manipulating you. This is not the old internet. When you enter the internet today, you are entering an actual digitally produced hallucination. One that was "seeded" by entities or persons for a reason.

You are in a feed back loop. Where did this information come from? An influencer? a 15 yr old? a nkorean? a russian? perhaps just some young man with too much testosterone that wants to start a ruckus for "fun". Where did this information come from that was so reliable?

Then, your actions become the target, by very definition. You become targeted. This is even on your old reliable forums and such. The whole thing has collapsed already, and is literally feeding its self. It's eating its own falsities and hallucinations, then spitting it back at you, but with a goal. It has a purpose now. The purpose of the ones doing the targeting. advertisers and influencers are actually chinese and iranian operatives in reality.

Even your job seeking apps are now spying and targeting you. This has a HUGE influence on society. An influence on what people think and feel. This "hallucination" is now peoples reality. Lots of people, walking around living in fantasy worlds of their own creation.

[Rich 2]

Familiar story

“Good for Google. Terrible for [insert issue of your choice]”

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything that pissed Google off is good

no, great.

The world would be a far, far better place without Google, Meta, Musk and Bezos , and of course, Trump FSCKing it all up.

[An_Old_Dog]

Facts vs Hallucinations

I wonder if most web searches these days are for things in which bad results are somehow still acceptable to users ("How old is celebrity X?") or not.

I never use AI summaries because when I search the web for facts, I need facts ("What time does the Post Office close today?"), not might-or-might-not-be-facts.

Even the straight (non-AI) web isn't trustable.

The other day (Saturday) I did a straight web search on Post Office hours, and it was reported to me that the nearest branch closed at 14:00. I rushed around, did things, and got to the Post Office at 13:30. Adhesive plastic lettering applied to the inside of the glass door reported that they closed at 15:00 on Saturdays.

Indifferent, lazy, or overworked staff -- all too-often -- fail to update signage when open hours change.

Who/what ought one believe? The possibly out-of-date signage, or the possibly-out-of-date web page?

I poked my head through the door, asked the clerk, who had seen me examining the signage, and got A Look, along with the answer, "3 PM." I didn't bother to explain.

[Sudosu]

Re: Facts vs Hallucinations

Google Query: "What time does the Post Office close today?"

AI Summary: The Post Office is a service run by the government and...40 paragraphs later...and is still often used by people today.

Ad 1: We have the best What time does the Post Office close today? you can get - sponsored link

Ad 2: Try our new What time does the Post Office close today? and get a free coupon

Ad 3: Top 10 things that What time does the Post Office close today?

Ad 4: See what What time does the Post Office close today? looks like today

[veti]

Re: Facts vs Hallucinations

The problem with your example is, it's completely false. And it's trivial to test and demonstrate that it's completely false.

Instead of sitting there making up bollocks, just try it yourself. Ask Google "What time does the Post Office close today?" I just did, and I got exactly the answers I would have needed if I actually gave a rat's arse.

[Someone Else]

Re: Facts vs Hallucinations

Get a grip, man!

_{You might consider recalibrating your sarcasm-o-meter}

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Facts vs Hallucinations

I work at a law firm. I had a colleague who bills at $900+ per hour use Google AI to get an address for a regulator we needed to send mail to. Address was wrong. Fortunately I knew that and didn’t let her change it to the made up address, but it is infuriating anyway.

I asked another colleague who bills for almost that much how to cite a particular document in the stupidly complex and obscure citation style for US legal writing. The colleague said “let me ask ChatGPT” -_-

[DS999]

You say its good for Google

But just because it is bad for the website owners doesn't mean it is good for Google. Their main source of revenue is from those search referral fees that their AI is hurting. If they made a "perfect" AI that simply told you the answer how could they possibly monetize that as well? You aren't clicking on multiple sites and seeing a bunch of ads. You're just getting the answer. Maybe that answer includes a single link you click on - if you asked it what the best refrigerator to buy was given all your criteria and it gives you a link to the place where you can buy it at the lowest price.

But why should that site pay Google for the referral? If it was chosen by the AI because it best met the criteria, not because they paid Google to influence the AI's decision, the AI was just giving "best" answer and if it says an LG refrigerator best meets my criteria why should LG pay Google for telling me what amounts to a "fact"? (the AI would consider it such and if I trusted that AI I would also consider it such) Why should the site that sells it for the lowest price pay Google either? They just have the lowest price, another "fact". LG and the retailer would be getting that referral/sale simply because they made the best product for my criteria and sold it at the lowest price.

Seems to me either Google makes a lot less ad money from search in this new world, or they are charging companies to influence the answers the AI is giving - that I'm not getting the best refrigerator that meets all my criteria but I'm getting an LG because they were willing to pay a lot to Google to steer queries like mine in their direction as much as possible. Of course then I would no longer trust its answers...

The only way it works is if I pay Google to use their perfect AI. It is as if there was some uber expert on refrigerators who had memorized every company's lineup and where the best prices for each model could be found, so he could answer that same question for me. He wouldn't expect LG to pay him for sending me their way. He'd expect ME to pay him for his time/knowledge!

[veti]

Re: You say its good for Google

Seems to me you haven't read the article that coined the term "enshittification", because you just described it pretty fairly without using the word. It's worth a read.

[MachDiamond]

Re: You say its good for Google

"But just because it is bad for the website owners doesn't mean it is good for Google. Their main source of revenue is from those search referral fees that their AI is hurting."

Companies are working hard to invent the self-licking ice lolly. Companies aren't going to buy ad-words or premiums to have their sites featured on the first few pages of search results when they aren't seeing referral counts from the search engines. I stopped using Google ages ago as the search results were obviously paid spam. If they now are optimizing their site to get more clicks rather than click-throughs, there's no point to the business.

I also find the AI summaries to be useless and mentally just filter them out. And no, I'm not looking to buy imported tat from Amazon (there's the first 4 pages of search results I can skip).

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: You say its good for Google

Because the first taste is free. After that, you will PAY.

[steelpillow]

The genie is out of the bottle

Lusers like AI summaries. It has happened, it is here, there is no going back. The TechBros are not going to let go of that, they will learn to monetise it. "Let my AI summarise your marketing puff for you. Cheap at the price!"

Frankly, if the paid clickbait migrates to the AI shite and search engines return to delivering actual search results, I would be one happy bunny. Oh, what, you can't shove your shit in my face any more? My heart bleeds for you - not.

[Cliffwilliams44]

Re: The genie is out of the bottle

Googles AI summaries are just terrible!

Open Claude and as the same question and get 100 times more accurate answer!

Even Gemini, a Google product is better than the search AI summaries.

If I am looking for a work-related answer, I go straight to AI (Claude preferred) as it saves time digging through search results from Stack Overflow or (God forbid) Reddit!

You just have to know when the AI takes a wrong turn. It happens and if you don't identity it early enough it goes totally bat shit!

As far as news or other types of searches (e.g. when is a store open) I just ignore the summaries.

[nobody who matters]

Re: The genie is out of the bottle

If you know enough about the subject to be able to spot the errors, you probably don't need to ask the question in the first place.

If you don't know enough about the subject to be able to spot the errors, then the search tool isn't going to be much help to you, because you will be left wondering whether the answer it has given you is entirely correct or not.

I preferred it when we had search tools which would give you an answer (or at least links to an answer) which you could almost always rely on being correct.

[MachDiamond]

Re: The genie is out of the bottle

"I preferred it when we had search tools which would give you an answer (or at least links to an answer) which you could almost always rely on being correct."

More importantly, a complete answer since many things can't be answered in one sentence if they are very important questions. Some supporting material is required so you know you have an answer you can use.

[Someone Else]

Re: The genie is out of the bottle

More importantly, a complete answer since many things can't be answered in one sentence if they are very important questions. Some supporting material is required so you know you have an answer you can use.

Of course, you will have to recognize that the "supporting material" is not "spinning a yam".

[MachDiamond]

Re: The genie is out of the bottle

"Lusers like AI summaries. It has happened, it is here, there is no going back. "

If the LCD people click on them a lot, they stick around and companies will continue to work on them at the expense of useful tech.

[Terry 6]

Some of hese comments seem to miss the point

Yes, stage 1 enshittification has happened. But for the time being at least the AIs give back to ordinary people the search that they want/need. In complex queries they may invent answers, but in general they provide people with the information they seek. Whereas traditional Google search does nothing of the sort. At best it refers users to relevant web sites, which may or may not contain the required information. More often it will refer us to an irrelevant website, or worse a f****ing YouTube video which has to be waded through to discover whether it has anything of value in there or not-mostly not, but that's several minutes of your life wasted, and you still have to go through it again and again till you find a half decent one. With luck the AI will just give you the damned answer.

[Gene Cash]

Re: Some of hese comments seem to miss the point

> With luck the AI will just give you the damned answer.

In my experience, it's certainly not a correct answer. I search using google daily. I have never seen an AI answer that was correct.

I've seen about a dozen where I was surprised and I THOUGHT were correct, but I did more digging, and they weren't.

[JimBz]

Re: Some of hese comments seem to miss the point

Never seen an AI answer that was correct? Really? It's not always perfect, but it's often enough or at least a good start for my kind of query.

I totally prefer AI answers over a list of promoted sites and optimised ad bucket sites. Google didn't put AI at the top because it wants to give you AI answers to demonstrate how wonderful its AI is or something, it did it to stop a migration to alternate AI answer sites. It's a loss of revenue but that's better than a total loss of relevance. Goggle want to remain the default search engine.

There's plenty of problems with AI, and we are in the early days when everything changes every other week, but this is better for me at least.

[Richard 12]

Re: Some of hese comments seem to miss the point

Try searching for a few things in an area where you have a great deal of expertise.

You'll find that the AI gives subtly to very wrong answers most of the time.

Once you see that in your areas of deep knowledge, consider how you'd tell the accuracy when you do not already know the answer.

[Terry 6]

Re: Some of hese comments seem to miss the point

This was my thought. I do wonder how many of the down voters are techie commentards ( whic his what you'd expect here of course) using AI queries for fairly obscure stuff that probability based searches, either Old Skool search or AI would not find. But for "How do I get this damned OXO pepper grinder open to refill it?" type of queries work well- mostly, whereas Google search will sideline you to a YouTube video about how to use the thing (you twist the top)- the video takes 3 minutes and two adverts to say this" but which doesn't tell you anything about refilling it after you've sat through all the obvious stuff that the talking face has been spouting.

[doublelayer]

Re: Some of hese comments seem to miss the point

When I do searches, I don't know the answer. A wrong answer is not any better than a useless answer. In the case of your pepper grinder example, I don't expect the AI to give me a correct answer tailored to the model of grinder I have, but instead what tends to work on most grinders. Twisting the top would have been my guess to open it, and then I expect there is a hole where I put in the new peppercorns. If that's all the AI summary says, it is no better than my guess. So just to check, I put the prompt "How do I open and refill an OXO pepper grinder?" into some LLMs, and that's what I got, paragraphs to tell me to open it and put the peppercorns into the hole, which is located either on the top, bottom, or side.

Meanwhile, if I ask a question about something more specific, the AI summary is more often wrong than useless. Either way, the answer is so frequently wrong that, when it is right, I can't count on that. Meaning I have to look at results to try to figure that out which is what I was going to do anyway. Maybe you're getting better results, although the people I know who trust LLM results have often found that following those instructions has given them results they don't appreciate.

[tiggity]

Re: Some of hese comments seem to miss the point

@Gene Cash

"I've seen about a dozen where I was surprised and I THOUGHT were correct, but I did more digging, and they weren't."

IMHO, those are the worst, when not obviously wrong likely to hoodwink the casual user in a hurry ... No problem if an error some say, well it is if someone was looking up an aspect of legislation.

.. I know there's all sorts of caveats about AI maybe not being correct (covers the back of Google or whoever) but we also know plenty of people will assume it's correct despite that "here be dragons" *warning.

* though sadly a far less scary warning given.

[Cliffwilliams44]

Re: Some of hese comments seem to miss the point

In the words of the great Sherman Potter, Horse Hockey!

If you form your query properly you will get a proper answer. In a lot of cases the answer will be correct but may have a misspelled command (an 's' on the end where it should not be)

In my experience, the LLMs are about 80% accurate. You just have to realize the things they are completely clueless about as "they" won't tell you that, they will just make shit up!

[doublelayer]

Re: Some of hese comments seem to miss the point

If you're warning us that they can always make the AI answer worse, granted. However, it's already annoying for most of us because the answers are often wrong or useless. For example, I recently deliberately ran an AI search through Google and Perplexity because I wanted to know how a certain technology works, but all normal search engines sent me to pages that had no interest in the technical details. What I really needed was to go to the effort of finding the patent for the technology or some introductory material describing the mechanism and get a summary of that, but that wasn't very easy to find in search results (including the word "patent" in the search query just found a lot of pages telling me that the mechanism concerned was in fact patented).

Seems like something that search-equipped AI agents should be able to do. They can find which pages have that information and distill the information for me, right? And I expect that they may get the information wrong, but at least Perplexity cites sources, real ones that actually exist, right? So I run the query and the LLM happily tells me that the mechanism works "electromechanically". Which is true. Yay, the LLM didn't make anything up. Of course, that's hardly any more detail than saying the thing was built out of atoms of some elements mixed together, or in other words, the AI search result was even more useless than the search results I had before, but it was pretending not to be.

In other cases, the answer is simply wrong, but people who assume that, since it looks plausible, it is probably correct end up acting on it anyway. Ideally, you get the correct answer to your query, but you're probably not getting it as often as you think.

[anonymous boring coward]

Re: Some of hese comments seem to miss the point

Yes, the AI summaries often contradict themselves. This may be a good thing, as it reveals how little intelligence there is behind the scenes. But it may also be a bad thing when people lacking in intelligence use these AI summaries. Examples I've seen include things such as claiming that half of 1.8 is 0.7.

[Cliffwilliams44]

Re: Some of hese comments seem to miss the point

What you hit here is an area that the AI has absolutely no detailed technical knowledge of. IT could not find exactly what YOU could not find!

Considering that many research documents and other such data are behind paywalls on the internet is probably the reason the AI had not ingested the information you needed.

You wanted the technical details of a patented product; I doubt the patent holder would be pleased if you were able to get that info via web search or AI?

[doublelayer]

Re: Some of hese comments seem to miss the point

Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the concept of a patent, which means there is a public document out there describing how the thing works, in a public database. That's what you have to do to get a patent. I think the company concerned probably didn't want that to be easy or they would have put their patent numbers on their website like others do, but it's still out there and available to me. Eventually, I can find that patent and read it to learn what makes their thing different from others. I was hoping to avoid having to do that manual search by using a tool which is supposed to be better at searching than I am and was probably trained on a bunch of patents including this one (from 2016) since they are public documents. It wasn't, hence why I had to do that search, which took a while, but now I have the details I was looking for.

And guess where I got that patent file eventually? I tried going to a few patent offices first, because they store the databases. Their search systems aren't very good, though. That means I ended up finding the patent number in question at...drum roll please... Google patents. You think they might have trained their own AI on that? The point being that this is yet another case where AI will try to answer a question it has no ability to answer and prove to be useless.

[Adair]

Why

would anyone want or need to use Google search?

It's a long time since it offered significantly better search than other sources.

The fact that loads of people use Google out of ignorance or unthinking habit doesn't make using it somehow 'okay'.

Shit is shit, with and without added glitter - why eat it?

BTW, I stopped using Google years ago. It doesn't miss me, and I definitely don't miss it.

[Gene Cash]

Recent Google Maps enshittification

White we are on the subject... recently, early in the morning (3am) I needed something to eat in an area I haven't visited in a while.

So I searched Google Maps and I clicked the Restaurants button and specified "Open now" as a filter.

It showed a lot of convenience stores, gas stations, and hotels in the RESULTS LIST (not restaurants) but only one actual restaurant. I was like "wait, I KNOW there are Arby's, McDonald's, Wendy's, IHOP, Denny's, and Waffle House here at the very least, where the hell are they?"

It wasn't until I did an extreme zoom, where the scale bar was 200ft, that I could see them. This is the level of zoom that pretty much shows the restaurant building and not much around it, so it's not very useful. When I zoomed back out to normal, they disappeared.

And yeah, I tried again after clearing my cookies & site info to make sure I wasn't logged in getting "personalized" results. And used the "Open 24hrs" filter as well. Same result.

[anonymous boring coward]

Re: Recent Google Maps enshittification

"Arby's, McDonald's, Wendy's, IHOP, Denny's, and Waffle House"

I thought you asked for restaurants?

[imanidiot]

Re: Recent Google Maps enshittification

It's simple, those chains are no longer paying Google to show up on maps. And neither are most of the actual restaurants. So Google doesn't show them until you zoom in. Been that way for a while now. (even before "AI" got introduced)

[nobody who matters]

Whilst Google search is indeed pretty mediocre nowadays, I find the results I get from other engines are either no better, or a good deal worse.

Search in generasl is pretty much u/s these days :(

[Sudosu]

Really? I'm liking Brave and DuckDuckGo for actually finding information nowadays.

Not perfect but definitely better than Google (IMHO) , and if you are in a pinch just ad !g to the end of you search to contact the mother-ship for their take.

[Cincinnataroo]

Fight back, if you want

This enshittification has gone so far that some search engines are active enemies of web site owners. (I find some search engines better so these are worth identifying.) In other words you don't want them, they give negative value.

Suggested actions by web site owners.

0. Find other ways to get visitors.

1. Evaluate search engines identify the friends and foes. This article helps. Promote those that are good citizens if you choose.

2. Identify visiting ML engine scrapers (may be same as search). User agent, IP, redirects, DNS lookup, automatic IP updating, ... you decide how much.)

3. For hostile scrapers deliver ML / LLM poisoning content, or blank page if you choose, and/or robot exclusion instructions. (Hand written, algorithmic, gradual change, ...)

4. Manage the system.

[elsergiovolador]

Snippets

Isn't this "snippets" thing all over again?

[Don Jefe]

Conversation Rates Are Rising

Clicks are down, but conversion rates are significantly higher. I don’t recall the figures from the presentation, but it was significant. The discussion quickly turned to how search engines can monetize that and deeper integration into websites and commissioned sales, and that’s far more interesting/concerning.

Google (and Bing) are going to try and capture a percentage of sales driven by AI to offset the losses as traditional keyword advertising spots dry up. Search engine rankings/AI inclusion is going to be predicated on embedding complex, granular tracking tied directly to financial data.

Investors are already searching for companies that are able to help that happen. If you know anyone in the sales tracking sphere, it’s probably worth keeping an eye on them. A bunch of money is coming that way.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Conversation Rates Are Rising

"predicated on embedding complex, granular tracking tied directly to financial data."

So carefully selecting the fattest pigs to slaughter rather than stampeding the herd over the bluff and hoping to pick up some choice cuts out of resulting shambles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, you mean that shit at the top of the search results

My brain just treats that as “advertising” so it is just ignored.

[Warhead1954]

Re: Oh, you mean that shit at the top of the search results

A few days ago one of my tech buddies told me to add '-ai' to my search queries to prevent getting 'that shit at the top of the search results" and it appears to work. I know next to bog-all about search engines, so I don't know if this just doesn't show AI results, or prevents the engine from going down the AI part. Any search geeks know the answer to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Balance

Things change as technology develops. Web sites will adapt to sell their stuff or their message. The real danger has existed for some time now and it is the filtering by a small number of companies. Now we will get narrative bias and selection as well as who gets to the top of the search ladder. We don't need more control of the Internet, we need control removed.

[Moldskred]

Never go full Æsop

"A Man and his Wife had the good fortune to possess a Goose which laid a Golden Egg every day. Lucky though they were, they soon began to think they were not getting rich fast enough, and, imagining the bird must be made of gold inside, they decided to kill it in order to secure the whole store of precious metal at once."

[JohnLH]

Given how superficial and often plain wrong the AI overview is this is bad news in general. I have learned to ignore them.

[anonymous boring coward]

"AIpocalypse"

That "i" reads like an "L", so it looks like a mistake. Serifed fonts, perhaps?

[Sudosu]

Oh I thought they had invented, wait for it, AI Bundy

Okay, now that I made the corny joke, is it wrong that I now want AI Bundy to be a thing?

[vcragain]

I have used Ecosia search engine for years now - supports tree planting !

[cbrisuda]

I switched to Ecosia when DDG started putting the AI garbage. It really bothers me from an environmental perspective (energy cost of LLMs). I know it’s opt out but that requires keeping cookies. And now Ecosia started putting it in too! So there’s nowhere to turn.

[Terry 6]

Though one thing I must confess

I've been basing my views of AI on ChaGPT. And DeepSeek. Google’s AI is a whole different kettle of ball games. Yikes! Google's is so much more superficial and sweeping.

[BenMyers]

Google search is garbage, with or without AI

Google search used to be my go-to for info (drivers, specs, repair manuals) about computer gear. No more. Even before it showed its AI chops, Google searches returned not the info I wanted, but instead directed me to the home page to sell me something. I now use Duck-Dick-Go in Firefox to fine the info I really want. This is a real pain-in-the-ass, Google!

[G R Goslin]

Google and relevance

Google has long since ceased to be a search engine for specific querries. i have initiated searches on the products of a specific manufacturer, and found that failed to find items from that specific manufacturer on the first two pages of returns, but many for items supplied by manufactures in the same or peripheral fields I have, for effect, at times just put in a query using the manufacturers name, and have it come up well down the listing.

I am increasingly turning to chatGPTto provide results unbiased by sales push.

[druck]

Re: Google and relevance

You really must remember to use the joke icon.

[Grunchy]

Dead Boards

https://ltd454.proboards.com/

Gone!

http://www.wreckedexotics.com/

Defunct!

[Ian Johnston]

Google's AI overviews are, in my experience, almost invariably nonsense.

Small example: I searched for "next Cumbria SRP playing day" (SRP is the Society of Recorder Players). AI Overview told me that there was one on a date, which, had it existed, would have been six months earlier, taking place in a church which does not exist in a town where Cumbria SRP does not meet and followed by a concert given by musicians who do not exist. All in quite plausible English, but that's the most you could say for it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Search has been shit for years. First they changed it so you only see those who choose to pay them (isn't that extortion?) now they change it so you only see their AI slop.

TBH it'll soon be easier to find things on the dark web than the normal web.

[Big_Boomer]

That's just ****ing HILARIOUS

So, Google AI results have decreased the footfall on the very sites of those who pay Google to INCREASE that footfall? That is a fucking epic example of shooting yourself in the genitals <ROTFPMS>. Well done Google, you created a market and now you are destroying the same market. So, what are your AI's gonna scrape for info when everyone blocks your scrapers because you are costing them money and giving nothing in return. The worlds biggest Freetards hoist by their own idiocy.

[cookiecutter]

if i had the cash

i'd setup poisoned websites all over the world to not only tar pit these fuckers but poison their models with stuff that would force them to have to take them down off the web for retraining

[Nick The Geek]

I'd be interested how this affects companies such as SkyScanner who market the search data - click-throughs, IP addresses/locations, conversions to actual bookings. How much of their direct traffic has been taken away?

Of course, there may be another non-IT related reason why US Tourism and Travel searches are coming down...

[JessicaRabbit]

People have good reason to avoid clicking through to sites in the search results. Said reason being that most of the results are garbage. These days most results are to sites specifically tailored to hoover up as much traffic as possible whilst having no real value to the reader. They exist to push affiliate links or ads at naive users and nothing more. Commercialising the web has destroyed it because every grifter sees it as easy money and they don't give a shit that they're destroying the commons.

[Andy 73]

As predicted

Google needs to grow, and that pressure eventually leads it to try and replace the one thing it feeds on - the rest of the internet.

It's been pointed out repeatedly that Google has a policy of trying to prevent people from clicking out of search and into results, but then denied by the company and it's workers. They insist that search results are better than every (subtly not the same thing), and remain wilfully oblivious of the the serpent eating it's own tail.

This is ultimately unsustainable. People can't make creativity pay, but the companies that dominate the space can't make creativity 'cheap' enough to sustain their business models. In the short term, this is starving us of quality content, product innovation and new entertainment. In the long term - who knows? We'd hope something new, but whilst creators remain passive and dependent on the big players, all we can expect is continued decline.

[Smartypantz]

I want out

People want to be idiots