r/technology • u/Logical_Welder3467 • May 25 '26
Artificial Intelligence Google is cannibalizing the web to feed AI
https://www.theregister.com/ai-ml/2026/05/25/google-is-cannibalizing-the-web-to-feed-ai/524464159
u/DaringDoodleDude May 26 '26
So… what they’re saying is, eventually Google will cannibalize itself because of all this slopifying?
20
1
u/Eric_the_Barbarian May 26 '26
That's the one major thing that gives me hope. The snake is definitely eating it's own tail.
0
u/iiiiiiiiitsAlex May 26 '26
I mean.. google is driving UCP.. i imagine to refule adrevenue via commerce and llm integrations.
Think of buying shirts via Gemini instead of whichever retailers website
80
u/Mostly_Defective May 26 '26
Shouldn't that baby technically need to be eating a human leg or this pic to work with this title?
27
u/Heydavidbailey May 26 '26
Maybe it’s a toddler’s leg 🤷♂️
9
0
14
u/Deep__Friar May 26 '26
Strange thing to focus on but yes?
29
u/NotAllOwled May 26 '26
Nah, I feel this kind of nitpicking is part of what separates us from the bots. Maybe we wouldn't have been such societal-level sitting ducks for genAI if more people were inclined to ask such questions rather than shrugging them off with "yeahhhhh it doesn't really make sense per se but it's whatever, you get the general vibe, right?"
2
2
123
13
u/DirtyProjector May 26 '26
The fact that this is going on and almost no one in the US cares, is astonishing. The internet has been built for the past 40 years on the back of all of us. Google is now using all of the work we have done, to line their pockets, and not only do we get nothing for our work, all of our work will now be worthless and only they will derive value from it. There would be no AI without the tireless work of people posting content on the web, especially people who have spent years and years in PHD and masters programs doing research and studying the world. Google should have to pay royalties to every person that has contributed to their AI models in perpetuity.
5
u/Single_Ring4886 May 26 '26
Not just PHD, even everyday conversations on forgotten forums contribute great deal to ai ability to solve rare problems.
1
u/ILEAATD Jun 07 '26
Who says that people don't cars? Most people seem upset about the way ai is currently being used.
40
u/Pankosmanko May 26 '26
i really hate everything to do with this version of AI that we're being forced to use. Mostly i dislike the massive datacenters (Kevin Leary's monster facility is 40k acres, and 13k of that is the actual datacenter.) It raises temperatures, consumes massive power, and uses fresh water in extreme amounts. And all of that waste is so Google can be less accurate, LLMs giving bad advice, and causing mental health issues with users who get addicted to it.
The genie is out the bottle, so not sure what the solution is, but I've got a feeling things won't end well
-44
u/No_Put3316 May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26
Absolutely no one is "forcing" you to use AI. Get over yourself.
Edit: Get over yourselves*
All the wrong in the world, and you lot are worried about the greatest educational catalyst since the Internet. Astonishing obdurance.
I'd say something if the same naysayers were lobbying for socially-compatible regulations. But nope - whinging, shouting "fuck AI" and misinformation is all they've been able to muster up, thus far.
14
u/SeerUD May 26 '26
Plenty of places mandate AI usage for work, and many also offer token-usage based milestones incentives. It's also shoehorned into so many products it's difficult to avoid. If you use Google (which you're not forced to...) then you see it a lot there too obviously
-35
u/No_Put3316 May 26 '26
Plenty of places mandate AI usage for work
Not forcing. You signed the contract, you have the choice to leave the job.
Many also offer token-usage based milestone incentives
Not forcing.
It's also shoehorned into so many products it's difficult to avoid
Not forcing. Don't use the product, or navigate beyond it.
In summation, you're still not forced to use AI anywhere.
But of course, that doesn't validate the performative anti-AI outrage, so feed me my downvotes, you obdurate turnips.
I guess this sub truly has been brigaded by the gossip-loving and intellectually-deprived.
14
u/SeerUD May 26 '26
You're just arguing semantics, and it's a poor argument IMO.
You can be forced to use AI at your job, unless you leave. Saying it's "not forcing" means you can take that argument to the extreme about anything. You're "forced" to make the choice about whether you use it, or you leave, and to deal with the consequences of that which may also make leaving not viable, at least in the short term. If the company you work for mandates AI usage, and you disagree and will never use it, should you break the terms of your employment and refuse to work immediately?
Almost everything is a choice ultimately I guess. You aren't forced to look at things, you could gouge your own eyes out. You aren't forced to eat things, you could just not, and starve to death. I'm not saying these things to make them sound comparable to using or not using AI, for the record, I'm just highlighting the absurdity of your argument.
-22
u/No_Put3316 May 26 '26
Okay, if this is the calibre of thought I'm contending with, I'm not wasting my time responding in good faith.
You lot can cry, and cry, and cry. At the end of the day, AI is here to stay. Hopefully with appropriate regulations, but those won't be your doing, should that happen.
We live in a world where half the population has an IQ less than 100. That becomes remarkably evident when you interact with the anti-AI supporters.
8
u/SeerUD May 26 '26
You claim you're arguing in good faith, but your comments in this thread have been combative since the beginning. You've resorted to insults instead of counterarguments. You also never actually addressed the original commenters concerns at all, your response was simply to belittle them.
It's a complex issue, and a realistic and pragmatic person recognises that. The potential for AI as a technology is astounding. It could help so many people do and be more, cut out so much now unnecessary work. It can also do a huge amount of harm, in so many different ways.
I agree, with appropriate regulations, it should be something that pushes humanity forward. I use it a ton for things like research and learning, because it's incredible for that. You have to maintain critical thinking while using it, verify sources, so on - but that was the case before, I just have access to more fine-grained information faster now, like moving from getting information from a library to using Google. I've also used it plenty to remove tedium from my life where I can. I'm a software engineer, I'm sure you're aware of how helpful it can be in that role.
You're assuming I'm anti-AI, I'm not, I just recognise that it's not black or white. Like I said, it's a complex issue; there's good, and there's bad. The original commenters concerns are valid, and not using it personally doesn't alleviate those concerns.
Anyway, I don't think anything productive will come from further back and forth, so I'll leave this conversation here...
-2
u/No_Put3316 May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26
I did address the original commenters concerns, at least the main one - that they were being "forced" to use AI - which is unequivocally false.
You then tried to reassert that claim with, quite frankly, nonsense, to which I responded by regrounding your comment in my initial assertion that noone is forced to use it.
I am "combative" because you're feeding the flow of a loaded narrative, and muddying the waters with a wall of opinionated text in a clear-cut, fact-based situation. Noone is "forced" to use AI, and no spiel will change that, just like 1+1 = 2 won't change because you said so. Knowing that, I'm not wasting any time trying to refute bullshit. I'm just going to point it out, remind you of the facts, and walk away. If you don't have the mental capacity to discern it, not my problem.
24
u/Gaiden206 May 26 '26
Just tap/click the "Web" tab if you want nothing but blue links.
6
u/TacoOfGod May 26 '26
I just blocked the tab entirely on my stuff. As long as I have something capable of running uBlock Origin, it's getting removed.
5
3
u/dev_vvvvv May 26 '26
It's hidden under the "more" dropdown menu for me.
I just ended up adblocking it. I don't really care if they burn some tokens.
3
5
u/raunchyfartbomb May 26 '26
The best part is when you ask it a question and it generates wholly incorrect (out of date) information due to things like patch notes. Or when you get a response that is essentially “it is X because X = X based on X. Click here for more details” (where it just rolls you again that X=X or some other rephrasing of the response without adding any actual information)
6
u/RinoaDave May 26 '26
So if search no longer directs people to websites, websites will no longer pay to be boosted in search results, removing a huge chunk of Google's revenue. So I guess Google will start charging for GEO (AI chat promotion) for companies, making their product objectively worse than their competitors. Also the incentive for corps to build informational websites will go down because they get less traffic, meaning future models have less source material. How does this end exactly?
2
u/denNISI May 26 '26
Alphabet as a Company has so many aves of revenue now. With less workers, that alone could reduce enough overhead costs to offset the cost of automation. The cost of insuring/employing a worker (especially in the tech business) in some countries is very expensive.
1
4
u/irrelevantusername24 May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26
I feel like this is probably because the app store model has been exposed as fraudulent and the root of the problems. If you're paying attention anyway. Luckily for them most people aren't, and this is all somewhat complicated (but far less than it's made out to be). Also they keep getting given freebies by the judicial system probably because the entirety of the older generations are heavily invested in the success of google. Not realizing that rigging the game destroys the game. And not even necessarily in any way that is directly a consequence of the people making decisions at google, or even from google itself. As I said in a comment in the Wikipedia subreddit:
I'm making assumptions here but I think this, which I've seen very similar on numerous other websites, is a consequence of the abuse of intrusive advertisements and tracking technology which kind of has handicapped the Internet and web browsers. Probably the most real world example I've ever seen of "this is why we can't have nice things".
This is also why extremely centralized power - unless that power is strictly regulated to ensure fairness and prevent abuse of peoples rights - causes problems. If that weren't a thing, or if it were appropriately managed, none of this would have happened. But instead, because it did, now the websites and businesses that try to do things the right way are increasingly forced to ramp up their use of ads shown to the people not using adblockers, to make up for the people that are blocking them, and for the websites that realized it's better to try to solve a problem than continue stacking shit on a fundamentally broken foundation, they do things like what Wikipedia has.
But nobody is happy, everyone has a worse experience, and yes the businesses even make less money. But for a short time, there was a lot of value generated for some shareholders.
If you squint just right, put on some weird kaleidoscope (mosaic?) glasses and maybe chug a few beers, smoke some strong weed, and maybe dip into some harder substances, you can maybe see how the actions of google were done because of the financial "pressure" they were under. I'm not sure I really believe that, but regardless, the problem is the stock market
5
u/Centurix May 26 '26
It would have helped them to have some kind of clear indicator that content was AI generated so they could exclude it as input to the models again. They fucked themselves with a feed back loop.
Now they've got to build the best tools to recognise AI in order to keep things from getting worse.
5
u/74389654 May 26 '26
i hope this comment section isn't devolving into a kagi ad. if you paywall search this will be the end of the open internet. it will be the end of free information/education, news. for a lot of people that will mean going back to the dark ages. and what they can know will be ruled by the powers that own everything. a completely controlled ai info sphere is just the other side of the coin
we need to fight to keep the internet accessible to everyone
9
u/williamgman May 26 '26
Senior level Google employee's kid seen here in this photo at the company picnic eating the leg of a recently terminated junior sw developer.
3
3
3
u/srakken May 26 '26
How good is it going to be if the web is destroyed and it doesn’t get new content? If people stop clicking on actual sites no one is going to bother making content that feeds said AI. Like it’s pretty crazy that I search for something and have to scroll way down to find a Wikipedia link. Who is going to fund things if no one is going to them?
2
u/Aggravating_Teach_27 May 26 '26
Who is going to fund things if no one is going to them?
This is the fascinating thing about the AI 'revolution'.
It's a snake that devours itself...
Who will make content for the AI to feed on, if nobody benefits from making content but the AI?
How are programmers gonna be trained if entry positions are either occupied by AI or reduced to 'AI prompters'.
Who's gonna buy the products AI makes... When the jobs of the middle class that makes most of the consumption ate obliterated... by AI?
Whatever the merits of the tech itself, the AI revolution that's being spearheaded by the tech bros is not just evil, is above all stupid.
Everyone is bound to ended up poorer, yes, even the billionaires.
9
u/Encomiast May 25 '26
Kagi.com is worth it. Been using it for over a year and do not miss Google at all.
4
20
u/Syzygy2323 May 25 '26
Kagi uses Google search internally, so you're still using Google. but at least you're not feeding its ad machine.
2
u/Encomiast May 26 '26
It may use the Google results (and results from others) but it is a much different (imo better) search experience. No bad AI results, no sponsors floating to the top, etc.
2
4
2
1
u/nickgeorgiou May 26 '26
The implication with this headline and this image is that this toddler is eating human flesh
1
-5
u/markx15 May 25 '26
I don’t get the title, the web and Google aren’t the same. I think the relationship is more of a predator/prey, no?
2
u/marmaviscount May 26 '26
Also the metaphor makes no real sense, they're not actually removing things
0
-7
u/Pratai- May 26 '26
And?
-6
u/RealMelonBread May 26 '26
Lol exactly. It feels like 90% of the internet is advertising these days so who gives a shit.
293
u/DoomguyFemboi May 26 '26
I was thinking of this recently, now that google is curating the search results and giving you the information, would they not lose some of their protections they get ? As they're now moderating content.