Search is dead. Or at least, it will be soon.
What do I mean? I mean that within 18-24 months, using google is going to be effectively pointless.
I’m going to make a personal bet against myself that this isn’t true, and I hope I lose.
But I can hear you asking, why do I think this? Well, lets look at how google right now today works:
- You go to google.com
- You type in a query
- The results are interpreted by an AI and you’re given a likely kinda right but mostly wrong answer
- You scroll past that and go nearly to the bottom of the page to find somthing relevant - Assuming anything relevant even appears on the front page.
And the last two points are what is going to end up being the issue.
SEO is a long understood game, played by Google, Corporations, and Scammers. Prior to AI, they just want to get to the top of search, and often enough, they did! Of course, this sucked, and Google would work to prevent it. But because of Google’s long term near-monopoly on search, Good results has stopped being a priority. Bad ones on the other hand, those are valuable. (Source: https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/images/press/Google%20Search%20Engine%20Monopoly%20Ruling.pdf Page 48, Section 134)
Which means that right now, Google is allowing bad results to filter to the top, suppressing more relevant, better results, because it lets them sell more ads - The more times you come back, the more ads, the more money. But then they also have that AI summarizes the top results - Which is just amplifying the issue. And then there’s ChatGPT and it’s ilk.
Right now the majority of text on the internet was written by humans, but that’s rapidly changing. I very vaugely and hesitatly estimate that it’s going to be far too close to count inside of 2 years. Even right now if you go to the top result on Google for most things you might search for, it’s probably going to have been written by an AI. An AI that is probably spewing, through no fault of it’s own, half truths and confident lies, with nobody checking, because why would you? And then there’s the ones that are deliberately false, driving people into scams.
And that problem is going to get worse.
And Google wants it. They’re practically begging for it.
Unless something changes, At least Google Search is dead.
Maybe give DuckDuckGo a DuckDuckGo?