Yay, instead of enshitified search loaded with ads to distract you from what you’re doing, we’ll get “AI” hallucinations with a side of advertising driven social engineering to distract you from what you’re done.
Great.
My fear is that in the near future we will miss Google when an even more perverse company with an even more unethical business fear takes its place. I hope I’m wrong
Yes, unethical practices seem baked in now with Big Tech, and Big Tech aspirants. I’m gratified to see open source AI keep up with the Big Tech offerings. At least it means there will be widespread alternatives. I hope it hobbles any one company from being as big as Google.
I’ve been programming since I was 10 and just a handful of years into my professional career in this field I can’t take it anymore. If you have a strong sense of justice this field is not for you. Feels like I kind of wasted my entire life tbh
There are places to work that aren’t complete dogshit, but you do have to avoid FinTech, FAANG, and probably anything with a lot of VC funding. You will make less money, but at least you won’t be asked to do morally reprehensible shit on the regular.
Some of my best experiences have actually been at non-tech companies with small IT teams for internal shit. Biggest team I’ve ever worked on was 30 devs and that’s probably about the largest team I’d want to work with.
EDIT: This does assume you’re working in the States which is a dumb assumption for me to make. I’m not familiar with the culture outside of the states, but I imagine it’s better than here.
Actual title + first paragraph
Google’s slow death has begun
ChatGPT and Generative AI might disrupt the advertising model itself. Including Google’s Search Ads monopoly. Also what’s new at Google I/O announcements. Answer? A LOT.
Google recently held its big annual product announcement event - I/O 2025 - and it got lots of upbeat coverage. There were dozens of new product upgrades across Android, Search, Gmail, etc. Of course, the big focus was AI.
Google seemed to be lagging in AI but has caught up to speed lately with its models topping various AI leaderboards. Not surprising, Google has deep wells of computing power and talent to compete in AI.
However, behind the scenes, all is not so rosy. Almost 75% of Google’s revenue comes from search, and it’s about to be obliterated. As anyone who has gotten used to using ChatGPT, Claude, or DeepSeek instead of Google Search will tell you - AI is miles better. Google is about to transform old Search into an AI Search like ChatGPT, Claude, DeepSeek, and all the other AIs, but the problem is their days of 90% market domination in this new medium don’t seem repeatable.
Google are about to be replaced as the dominant means of internet search - but just how much, and how fast?