Wow some terrible reporting about Google's latest horrible ideas about how to distort information access in the name of "convenience" (or something):
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Not satisfied to cut people off from the important sense-making of looking at information in its context and finding and navigating different perspectives (what "AI overviews" do), Google also wants to tell you what to search for:
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@emilymbender
"rather than making you decide" is such a fancy way of saying "we've removed your choice". -
@emilymbender Links become an afterthought. Websites see their traffic plummet because the LLM is summarising everything on the search page. No one sees the ads, sites go out of business, LLM has no new data to train on and starts to lag behind current events.
@Qybat @emilymbender if no one sees the ads, the companies will stop buying adspace. That's not what google wants. So I guess they will embed the ads in the search results.
And the web will have finally evolved to be just like television. Just a bit more interactive because you'll be allowed to purchase directly what you see on screen (but probably nothing else).
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More stenography here. Google starting shoving the "AI Overviews" into query results as an opt-out situation. That is, you have to take action to have them not pop up. I don't doubt they are *shown to* 2.5 billion monthly users, but that doesn't mean they are used by as many or desired by them.
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@emilymbender this is enshittification of the next level to turn us into brainless puppets on their strings
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Wow some terrible reporting about Google's latest horrible ideas about how to distort information access in the name of "convenience" (or something):
https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/19/google-search-as-you-know-it-is-over/
A short thread
🧵>>@emilymbender Is this an article of press release? Either way it's AWFUL.
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How infantilizing --- you thought you were looking to find something that someone else wrote on the web. But woah! Now you've been "dropped into" an "interactive experience". Yeah, Google can just fuck right off with that.
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@yala fits perfectly @emilymbender
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But all the academic papers in the world showing why something is a bad idea won't stop companies from doing it, if it's profitable and/or fits into their quasi-religious beliefs that "AI" is the future, alas.
So let's look at what Google is up to now, or at least says they are, via TechCrunch as stenographer:
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@emilymbender I'll see you that and raise you cogent arguments about why behavioural change, not just education, are needed: https://www.asc.upenn.edu/news-events/news/largest-quantitative-synthesis-date-reveals-what-predicts-human-behavior-and-how-change-it Secondary reference from the APNIC blog about why IPv6 uptake has failed to reach certain expectations; which, ironically, is a part of the Internet relatively free from unwanted LLM scraper incursion, so far. The neat Hilbert curve based heat maps for IPv4 address spaces do not map so neatly to IPv6 because of the massively increased address space.
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5 years ago (2021) Google researchers Metzler et al put out a preprint talking about how LLMs would change information access ("Rethinking Search"). It was full of TERRIBLE ideas, and Chirag Shah and I wrote a reply ("Situating Search"):
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3498366.3505816
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@emilymbender The point that their search product was already, to use the vernacular, crap, at this point, must have been lost on them, and Sundar Pichai in particular is responsible for this, as Ed Zitron has neatly elaborated upon elsewhere.
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For one final shudder: Pichai here seems to want to think this is helping the world somehow? Gah.
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@emilymbender Infantalism is GAFAM's Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). The comparisons with Aldous Huxley's seminal work betray themselves.
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Wow some terrible reporting about Google's latest horrible ideas about how to distort information access in the name of "convenience" (or something):
https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/19/google-search-as-you-know-it-is-over/
A short thread
🧵>>@emilymbender I want my printed encyclopedia back...
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We don't have to buy this journalist's view of the future as already written by Google. Every time you click through to look at the actual source page you are helping to maintain our information ecosystem and build a better world.
/fin (for now)
@emilymbender Thank you for this summary and analysis!
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@Qybat @emilymbender if no one sees the ads, the companies will stop buying adspace. That's not what google wants. So I guess they will embed the ads in the search results.
And the web will have finally evolved to be just like television. Just a bit more interactive because you'll be allowed to purchase directly what you see on screen (but probably nothing else).
@nicoe @Qybat @emilymbender why "embed" ads when you can manipulate information in a way that curates the "search result" so it positions the paid-for "goals" as the only valid options or cast in the most "positive" light. Which is a problem when the business is motivated by ads revenue. And a bigger one when politics get involved. A reality distortion on a massive scale.
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Wow some terrible reporting about Google's latest horrible ideas about how to distort information access in the name of "convenience" (or something):
https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/19/google-search-as-you-know-it-is-over/
A short thread
🧵>>@emilymbender Six alternatives to Google Search hosted in Europe
https://european-alternatives.eu/alternative-to/google-search
I usually use Qwant and I'm very happy
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Wow some terrible reporting about Google's latest horrible ideas about how to distort information access in the name of "convenience" (or something):
https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/19/google-search-as-you-know-it-is-over/
A short thread
🧵>>@emilymbender #FuckAI #BoycottGoogle 'Nuff said!
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We don't have to buy this journalist's view of the future as already written by Google. Every time you click through to look at the actual source page you are helping to maintain our information ecosystem and build a better world.
/fin (for now)
@emilymbender
I guess you are already aware of the "CEO said a thing" concept. -
@emilymbender Thank you for this summary and analysis!
@tero @emilymbender Yes, thank you, Dr. Bender!
Earlier, I had read that Google wanted to display webpages in a way AI determined was better than your own design but now I guess they won't even show any original webpages at all. -
@nicoe @Qybat @emilymbender why "embed" ads when you can manipulate information in a way that curates the "search result" so it positions the paid-for "goals" as the only valid options or cast in the most "positive" light. Which is a problem when the business is motivated by ads revenue. And a bigger one when politics get involved. A reality distortion on a massive scale.
@simpleanecdote @Qybat @emilymbender yeah that's what my embed was about, it will be just like product placing in the movies, you don't see them but they're there and they shape what's normal and desirable
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NO NO NO NO NO! Flashy polished looking webpages that no one has accountability for run absolutely counter to the common good when it comes to a health information ecosystem AND an informed public.
(Also, "Antigravity"? Yeah, you want us to think this is very cool science fiction and/or magic. Not buying it.)
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@emilymbender It is "antigravity" in the marketing/community-management sense of "gravity." It'll definitely push everyone away...
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We don't have to buy this journalist's view of the future as already written by Google. Every time you click through to look at the actual source page you are helping to maintain our information ecosystem and build a better world.
/fin (for now)
@emilymbender So long, Googles.
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NO NO NO NO NO! Flashy polished looking webpages that no one has accountability for run absolutely counter to the common good when it comes to a health information ecosystem AND an informed public.
(Also, "Antigravity"? Yeah, you want us to think this is very cool science fiction and/or magic. Not buying it.)
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@emilymbender so we won't know what's AI slop and what's a real site?
