Have you googled anything recently? It’s useless now.
Google is now providing an “AI Overview” as the top result for all searches before providing a NOT SO OBVIOUS extraction from an article(also done through an algorithm), before going to a “PEOPLE ALSO ASK” section, then FINALLY you arrive at a list of websites.
This is unusable.
Worst of all, it’s going to finally kill conventional media. I say FINALLY because Meta and Twitter and all the other platforms (to a lesser extent) started that a while ago.
If it’s not clear, the AI overview is meant to “read” the entirety of the internet, or whatever Gemini can index, and provide an answer for the user. However in the swallowing of “the internet” by Gemini it prevents the user from actually clicking through to a website. Now it literally does not prevent a user from getting to the website from which Gemini sourced this information however it forces the user to scroll down about three pages worth before you get to ANY Website.
Most conventional online media is driven by ad sales, those ad sales were already down because of social media platforms being the main drivers of traffic/profilers of users. Why Wired dot com for ads when you can pay Meta to put your soda ad infront of a very specific audience?
Well now that’s even worse, why pay Wired dot com OR Meta when Google’s AI is gonna swallow all the content anyway and make it insanely difficult for the user to access a website.
By inserting AI overviews into Google search results Google has decided it’s no longer in the “point you to what you want” business and is instead in the “steal the words from the people who are telling you what you want and scramble some jacked up version of what I think the answer is right in your face” business. No more referral traffic. Ever.
This kills the media. RIP.
Just another example of AI “solving” a problem no one has.
The whole reason I’m writhing this though, why I’m writing anything again, is because I think this is just the start of a new version of the internet that we can all still be a part of. The tombstone above is a clue, I picked that 2010 date because that’s the start of Digg? Remember Digg? Digg was a news aggregator, fueled by users where people would curate links submit them to Digg and other users could approve of the links shared by “Digging” them and the most popular links would surface to the top. Digg was not the first aggregator by any means but it was the first to achieved a sort of critical mass where it would drive massive traffic, you could go “viral” on Digg and it really became a sort of “Front page for the internet”. Digg changed the way I (and many people) used the internet. Before I used to have a number of websites I would check a few times a day, a couple of blogs, a couple of related blogs, a couple of forums, a couple of emails….when I started using Digg, now I would just go to Digg. Then it was Reddit, Then it was Facebook, Then it was twitter, Then it was Reddit again. The blog roll died. The forums died. The websites died.
You know how we prevent AI from killing the internet? We go back to the pre Aggregator internet. We go back to the email forwards days. We go back to not using platforms exclusively as our source of “internet”. We go back to not caring about something “going viral” and just about something being cool online. Going viral isn’t even possible anymore, all the AI is swallowing that too. Everything is niche. Everything is custom and segmented. The middle is dying, media either has to be a massive effort or hyper local.
Furthermore we must realize that not only are we consumers of media, but as AI has demonstrated in the consumption of every bit of information out there we are also attention generators.
So before I keep rambling here’s I think we can keep this new version of the internet alive.
Don’t use AI summaries
Go to the websites you like
Share with your friends, on email or group chat, or something like this substack.
Don’t use AI summaries for anything, not for your email digest, or your group chats or your search results. They’re probably gonna be wrong anyway, but they’re literally reading for you.
Go to the websites you like, by typing addresses again. Remember bookmarks? your browser still has them. Use them.
Lastly, share with your friends. You’re not gonna get a job from twitter anymore, CBS isn’t gonna make a show about you, hell not even Freevee will. You’re not gonna be a millionaire from “content” on the internet…so stop caring about it? We missed that window, that money dried up. The internet can still be cool though, it can still be fun. Go back to the days of email forwards and sharing in the group chat.
In this our elders got it right, You know every latino family out there has a bumping whatsapp. Start your own. Share the stuff you like, realize you are not only a consumer of the internet but a creator of it too.
That’s why A Pocho Newsletter is back.
It will be an anti-AI-summary view of the internet and culture with the view of sharing what is fun about my internet. I’ll share posts, and other writers, and just relish in the fact that the era of big internet is dead.
Amonos.