2024’s IO keynote containedsurpriseplenty of AI announcements, with some genuinely useful gimmicks and features.
AI Answers
Imagine an old Yellow Pages, filled with ads and listings for every local business.
But the point is clear.
Google’s AI search could bypass the web.Google
We rely on Google as a middle person to connect our searches with the websites we want to find.
A disaster is what happens.
Blogs, news sites, and other businesses all lose traffic.
Who needs to visit a wesite when Google can crib its work for free?.Google
Nobody visits them because they get their answers right there on Google’s home page.
You and I get worse results becausehow can we trust the answers?
If we know anything about generative AI, it’s that it just makes up answers that sound convincing.
Take romantic advice from AI, why not?.Google
“I can’t believe Google duffed one of these again,” said Patel on Threads.
Who will buy search ads when there are no search results?
How will Google track your movements across the web if you no longer visit websites after searching?
Like it or not, Google is a huge part of the web’s ecosystem.
It’s where most of us begin every sortie into the web.
It provides businesses with customers and customers with answers.
It sends traffic to news sites, which turn that traffic into revenue to pay their writers.
If Google goes all-in on AI, which it seems likely to do, then that ecosystem is dead.
One wonders if Google can even get away with this.
It’s one thing to index the web and sell ads on those listingsthe Yellow Pages model.
This is the odd quandary presented by AI.
Right now may be the time to switch away from Google search altogether.
