Hallucinated Results, Valid Ads

Google announced recently that the search results and the whole search experience will change. No more list of search results under a sea of ads and unwanted answers.

From now on, everybody will get unwanted chat-like answers to their search queries. Answers distilled from stolen content by a company which wants to usurp the web. I have no expectations of this move. Google’s quality in most of their products has been continually enshittified to the point, where I only use YouTube as the sole Google product. And the search experience has been the worst. Not now, not a year ago. Many years ago already.

Along with this change, Google also announced that, insert surprised Pikachu face, there will be also ads served alongside these new search “results”.

One does not have to be a stable genius to realize, that the “AI-fication” of the whole search experience from Google is nothing more than a complete and utter “AD-fication” of the results. Ads will now be part of a natural looking text which will serve the role of the search result. That means that whatever Google shows you as a “result” can all just be an ad. And the user won’t have any choice in this.

I am pretty sure, that as is the case with YouTube, the ad tech will work flawlessly all the time, while the actual product will be enshittified on permanent basis. Expect half-true if not outright false answers, propped by ads, greed, and grift.

Solution is simple. Stop using Google. There are tons of alternatives now. DuckDuckGo, Kagi, Brave Search. Choose one. All are better than Google and have been for some time.