Google’s AI Hype Circle

Kagi Search

A new search engine (and browser!) that will have a paid business model.

Between this and Duck Duck Go, there’s evidence of an increasing appetite for alternatives to Google’s increasingly-more-rubbish search engine.

Google’s Top Search Result? Surprise! It’s Google – The Markup

I’ve been using Duck Duck Go for ages so I didn’t realise quite how much of a walled garden Google search has become.

41% of the first page of Google search results is taken up by Google products.

This is some excellent reporting. The data and methodology are entirely falsifiable so feel free to grab the code and replicate the results.

Note the fear with which publishers talk about Google (anonymously). It’s the same fear that app developers exhibit when talking about Apple (anonymously).

Ain’t centralisation something?

The only winning move is not to play

My mind boggles at the thought of using a generative tool based on a large language model to do any kind of qualatitive user research, so every single thing that Gregg says here makes complete sense to me.

Can Directories Rise Again? - The History of the Web

Search has bent in quality towards its earliest days, difficult to navigate and often unhelpful. And the remedy may be the same as it was a quarter century ago.

Information literacy and chatbots as search • Buttondown

If someone uses an LLM as a replacement for search, and the output they get is correct, this is just by chance. Furthermore, a system that is right 95% of the time is arguably more dangerous tthan one that is right 50% of the time. People will be more likely to trust the output, and likely less able to fact check the 5%.