News from Google This week’s AI-immersed developer event reveals that we’re on top of a new era of search.
Following Microsoft’s incorporation of OpenAI’s technology into Bing, Google is also experimenting with its own AI technology, opening up new ways to use search. It’s clear that the market for information retrieval on the Internet is undergoing its first major overhaul in a really long time.
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As with all major evolutions in technology, these changes to search have far-reaching and lasting effects. There will be winners and losers, and among the latter, at least according to an early review of Google’s new changes to search, will be the website that hosts the writing.
Google and Bing are rapidly becoming adept at using large language models to generate answers to questions, eliminating the need to visit websites to find answers. As a result, media companies, bloggers and his sleazy SaaS startups may see less traffic to his website and less attention to their services.
Until the rush of generative AI, it felt like changes to search engine technology were gradual unless they were to monetize user activity. Google has spent years trying to increase the amount of answers it gets on its search pages to keep users from going to other sites, sometimes reducing the load of ads and placing ads in search results. I’ve tried to emphasize the customer over no website.
Did this prove to be better for the Internet? You could argue that it isn’t, but it’s pointless. It is doubtful that Google or its ilk will shake off its commercial bias and build features at its own expense that will prove beneficial to end users. They can’t afford that.
As Google and Bing build their technology, it’s no surprise that they don’t put the needs of third-party websites ahead of their own.
