Sucked Dry

In The Atlantic (Gift Article), Justin Pot explains how Google’s New Search Tool Could Eat the Internet Alive. “Instead of sending you off to other corners of the web, more search results appear within Google. Sort of like ChatGPT, it pulls information from various websites, rewords it, and puts that text on top of your search results—pushing down any links you see. In the process, it stifles traffic to the rest of the internet, lessening the very incentive to post online. With AI, Google Search might eventually set off a doom loop for the web as we know it.” Google has actually been doing whatever it can to provide users with the answers and information they need without leaving Google for years. Until now, I considered the strategy to be one of the riskiest in tech. After all, Google’s golden goose is the money they make when you click a paid link and leave their site. Now, facing the competition from ChatGPT and others, the strategy has become almost mandatory. But what will the web become once everything gets sucked into a few portals?