Aka arguably the largest intentionally facilitated product downgrade in the history of capitalism www.theverge.com/news/655930/... - ThreadSky

bcmerchant.bsky.social • 7 days ago

Aka arguably the largest intentionally facilitated product downgrade in the history of capitalism

https://www.theverge.com/news/655930/google-q1-2025-earnings

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bobblakley.bsky.social•7 days ago

And the Sonos update isn't even a year old...

peter-butler.bsky.social•6 days ago

Microsoft Windows *has* to be high on that list too

cbquist.bsky.social•7 days ago

https://bsky.app/profile/cbquist.bsky.social/post/3lnlwc63r4k22

propcazhpm.bsky.social•5 days ago

Right, it's not like people have a choice. It's auttomatic.

stephencoxauthor.bsky.social•6 days ago

I'd pay £60 a year for the Google we had eight years back.

quicksauce.bsky.social•6 days ago

Do they really "reach me" when I scroll right past them?

john-gardi.bsky.social•7 days ago

The AI overviews are generally pretty good but they fail they fail big!

omegamom.bsky.social•6 days ago

I think United States of America v. 2.0 is maybe on the list of “largest intentionally facilitated product downgrades”. Sigh. But google certainly ranks up there!

talesofatonement.bsky.social•7 days ago

The way Google uses AI is so intrusive, and it's impossible to opt out

onetruepatriot.bsky.social•6 days ago

https://www.androidauthority.com/how-to-turn-off-ai-overviews-google-3445771/

talesofatonement.bsky.social•6 days ago

Thanks

johnbradley.bsky.social•6 days ago

Just opt out of Google

graehall.bsky.social•6 days ago

The fact there's no way to easily disable them and stick to regular search results is infuriating and a missed business opportunity by the formerly "don't be evil" mega corp

https://bsky.app/profile/graehall.bsky.social/post/3lnndi4l3t226

hagenblix.bsky.social•6 days ago

Adding &udm=14 to the search url does remove them (not an easy way, necessarily, but can be done via modifying the search or adding an extension for most browsers)

spencersb.com•7 days ago

I'm curious if they're still counting users that block the AI overview with something like uBlock Origin.

The overview definitely still tries to load, it just doesn't get shown.

susanschorn.bsky.social•6 days ago

Just wanna plug this site that forces Google "web" results only. I've made it my default search page and wow do I enjoy not having to scroll past more crap: https://udm14.com/

theurv.com•7 days ago

I miss old search so much

phand1.bsky.social•7 days ago

Actually it's an improvement over the piles of paid listings/ads you got at the top for any search before. Ads/placement still a lot, but you can get something useful before them now.

palecentaur.bsky.social•7 days ago

I'd rather consistently have 2 ads that I can ignore than a blurb that is very inconsistent in whether it's correct or incorrect and buries the actual thing I'm looking for in some random page further down the search page.

palecentaur.bsky.social•7 days ago

It used to be "ad, ad, correct thing," now it's "AI summary that may or may not be true and can't be relied on, mystery page, mystery page, mystery page, maybe the correct thing somewhere"

fiona-webster22.bsky.social•7 days ago

=bleah= I switched to Duck Duck Go about a year ago. It's not ideal, but I don't miss Google at all.

Duck Duck Go doesn't do anything other than be a search engine. Google was always trying to sell me stuff & his search order seemed like whoever paid them the most ended up on top.

josephsabol.bsky.social•7 days ago

I use several search engines, different databases, different purposes. To your point, google is not necessarily any better than others. Same for chrome; brave is becoming my default browser (but I also use several, different purposes.) And, I go through the settings and turn off stuff I don't want.

eubanksengineeringresearch.com•7 days ago

Second largest. The product was already shit compared to what it was 10 years ago.

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

iamaphextwin.bsky.social•7 days ago

Udm14

acinixys.bsky.social•7 days ago

Had to go out of my way to install a Google AI removing extension on all my devices

The amount of total horseshit info google throws out is obscene. Made 10x worse since I'm in Africa and the info it pulls is almost always wrong.

justchidi.bsky.social•7 days ago

The lie we tell ourselves out of AI beefing.

If you’re doing a google search, read the AI overview and ignore the search results, then the problem is with you not the overview. Overviews are definitely useful and not a downgrade

peter-butler.bsky.social•6 days ago

It feels a bit like theft for Google to steal answers from websites and present them as its own

bcmerchant.bsky.social•6 days ago

I think it's 100% theft! They get to sell the ad dollars against the overviews after all, and more time on platform is better for Google

justchidi.bsky.social•7 days ago

Overviews are not perfect, they make mistakes sometimes and has gotten better over time, and while it might be a distraction for some, for others it’s a useful overview before checking out the search results.

Sponsored ads links are a much bigger problem and downgrade than AI Overviews

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