What is also interesting is one of the biggest search companies is using it to steer traffic away from its former 'clients'. The very websites google talked into slathering their advertisements all over themselves. By giving them money and traffic. But that worked because google got a pretty good cut of that. But now only google gets the 'above the fold' cut.
That has two long term effects. One the place they harvest the data will go away. The second is their long term money will decrease. As traffic is lowered and less ads shown (unless google goes full plaster it everywhere like some sites).
AI is going to eat the very companies making it. Even if the answers are kind of 'meh'. People will be fine with 'close enough' for the majority of things.
Short term they will see their metric of 'main site retention' going up. It will however be at the cost of the websites that fed the machine.
You don't even need to bring up corporate collusion, countless price gouging schemes, or the entire enshittification movement to understand that competition discovers the dark patterns. Dark patterns aren't something to be avoided, they're the natural evolution of ever-tighter competition.
When the eyeball is the product, you get more checks if you get more eyeballs. Dark patterns are how you chum the water to attract the most product.
generic92034|7 months ago
moontear|7 months ago
If Google throws in a free AI summary in their search it only helps promoting Gemini in the long run.
sumtechguy|7 months ago
What is also interesting is one of the biggest search companies is using it to steer traffic away from its former 'clients'. The very websites google talked into slathering their advertisements all over themselves. By giving them money and traffic. But that worked because google got a pretty good cut of that. But now only google gets the 'above the fold' cut.
That has two long term effects. One the place they harvest the data will go away. The second is their long term money will decrease. As traffic is lowered and less ads shown (unless google goes full plaster it everywhere like some sites).
AI is going to eat the very companies making it. Even if the answers are kind of 'meh'. People will be fine with 'close enough' for the majority of things.
Short term they will see their metric of 'main site retention' going up. It will however be at the cost of the websites that fed the machine.
floatrock|7 months ago
Oh bless your heart.
You don't even need to bring up corporate collusion, countless price gouging schemes, or the entire enshittification movement to understand that competition discovers the dark patterns. Dark patterns aren't something to be avoided, they're the natural evolution of ever-tighter competition.
When the eyeball is the product, you get more checks if you get more eyeballs. Dark patterns are how you chum the water to attract the most product.