this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2023

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Google has sent internet into ‘spiral of decline’, claims DeepMind co-founder (www.telegraph.co.uk)

submitted 11 months ago by Bebo@literature.cafe to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Google has plunged the internet into a “spiral of decline”, the co-founder of the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) lab has claimed.

Mustafa Suleyman, the British entrepreneur who co-founded DeepMind, said: “The business model that Google had broke the internet.”

He said search results had become plagued with “clickbait” to keep people “addicted and absorbed on the page as long as possible”.

Information online is “buried at the bottom of a lot of verbiage and guff”, Mr Suleyman argued, so websites can “sell more adverts”, fuelled by Google’s technology.

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[–] d33pblu3g3n3@lemmy.world 39 points 11 months ago (5 children)

DDG to the rescue! It's astounding how in this day and age, duckduckgo gives much more meaningful results than google. Exception made for local businesses, but for technical info and issues, DDG is way better.

[–] alsu2launda@lemmy.world 21 points 11 months ago

I have noticed this too, DDG is giving me more of what i want, google always disappoints with random an unrerlated resutls, Some of the resultso of DDG are not even visible in first page of google results.

[–] fiddlestix@lemmy.world 11 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Obligatory mention of Kagi (which is actually brilliant).

[–] letsgo@lemm.ee 10 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Mmm, but what's their plan to resist enshittification? After all, Google started out as "fundamentally different, user-centric." What will Kagi do when their market penetration peaks and the business managers demand more growth?

[–] Chunk@lemmy.world 14 points 11 months ago (4 children)

You have to pay for kagi so they are not incentivized to serve ads. They are incentivized to give you a good set of search results so you keep paying.

[–] Natanael@slrpnk.net 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Lots of services are both paid and still show ads. Like cable TV

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 11 points 11 months ago

And Microsoft Windows.

[–] Amir@lemmy.ml 7 points 11 months ago

They're not market-leading, but if they would be why wouldn't they enshittify?

[–] WoahWoah@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Exactly. The simple fact is, people need to get more willing to pay for things with money instead of personal data. Nothing is free, but we like the idea that things don't cost money, and instead we've allowed corporations to literally buy and monetize our very selves.

[–] ThePenitentOne@discuss.online 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Problem is, a lot of people don't have a lot of money because of how the world has been allowed to go. Everything is funnelled towards the worst people who go unpunished somehow. There needs to be an uprising or something.

[–] dlrht@lemm.ee 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Just curious, in the hypothetical situation that 100% of users on the web used Kagi how is it any different? They'll demand more growth at that point but how would they achieve it? I don't see how paying for the service avoids the issue of the product becoming worse as a result of peak market penetration and needing new methods of growth

[–] grayman@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago

They charge an assload to use their service.

[–] NakedGardenGnome@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I've used it this month a bit for the free 100 searches, but found it rather similar to my Google results. Can someone enlighten me in how they provide a better service?

[–] Sendbeer@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

I find the results to be cleaner and more relevant at least. With Kagi the relevant link is usually first or second link (like Google used to be) and the same search on Google I sometimes have to scroll down about 3-4 pages till I get to something relevant. Worse some of the ads Google is pushing to the top are misleading or completely contrary to what I'm looking for.

Kagi allowing me to ban domains (bye bye pinterest) and boost others has also been pretty helpful.

[–] grayman@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

$5/mo

... per person.

Or $20 for 6 in your house. $240/yr for your family to use a search engine.

I mean... Come on! There's no way that's under 95% profit.

[–] Rodeo@lemmy.ca 10 points 11 months ago

Unfortunately DDG has gone downhill quite a lot in the last year or two.

Exception made for local businesses,

It's funny you say that, because in the last year or so suddenly my search results are being polluted with completely unrelated links to local businesses that don't even contain a single one of my search terms.

They've obviously struck some deal where they're shoehorning these ads into search results now. Very frustrating because they serve them as regular links so they bypass adblockers.

Really scummy move on their part, and it's made their service worse to boot.

[–] dutchkimble@lemy.lol 2 points 11 months ago

I feel Kagi does both things

[–] Asimo@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 months ago

I mean, I know David DeGea is a good keeper but I'm not sure he can save the internet too.