posted in Technology
Google’s AI Is Destroying Search, the Internet, and Your Brain
cross-posted from: slrpnk.net/post/25347642
www.404media.co/googles-ai-is-destroying-search-the-internet-and-your-brain/
Replying to @GolfFoxtrotLima@sh.itjust.works
I haven’t used Google as a primary search engine in a decade or more. Nothing I do depends on Gemini (I don’t even use Apple Intelligence that’s a Gemini white label).
Personally, I think what Gemini is destroying is a market-based financial model that many came to associate with the Internet, information access and lifestyle.
Most of the websites I visit pre-date Google and some have gone as far as blocking all bots via robots.txt. They survive not via predatory ad networks but by donations and volunteers.
It’s why I like Lemmy; it follows the same model.
Replying to @adespoton@lemmy.ca
I think it’s cute you think the AI sites are paying attention to robots.txt. 🤣
Replying to @billwashere@lemmy.world
I don’t; I think googlebot is paying attention to it, and AI sites get a LOT of their initial visibility and site ranking from the Google index.
Case in point: the sites I spend time on that set robots.txt to deny all bots before the LLM wave started still aren’t getting hammered with AI bot requests, while the ones that didn’t are.
I can see it on my own websites as well; I’ve got one that’s in Google’s index, and it gets a constant low volume traffic from AI bots. The ones that aren’t listed? They just get traffic from exploit scanners.