Five years ago, Google’s climate action ambitions were the gold standard for Big Tech. Then, with power demand spikes from AI data centres, in July it scrubbed its sustainability website of its 2030 net zero pledge.
This is more about the drive to be a leader in AI than the public goodwill.
The antitrust stuff revealed a lot but one of the major things it revealed is that Google views chatgpt as the biggest existential threat to search. Younger users skip Google now.
Of course this is because Google spent the past 5-10 years abusing their monopoly protected position to worsen their product so user engagement would go up (a more frustrating search experience means you’re more likely to search several queries, being delivered multiple pages filled with ads and tracking bullshit instead of just one).
But they won’t reflect on that and improve their product. They will leave it as is and try to make their shit AI blurb at the top of search work better. This is inherently foolish vs something like chatgpt because google search is typically fed much less robust prompts. They get something like “best bank account” or “2014 nba mvp” whereas users are conditioned to given chatgpt a conversational prompt, “what bank has the best rate for savings accounts right now?”. The former is part of why you see much more misconception, incorrect information, and hallucination with googles ai shit.
But again they won’t reflect on this. They won’t bow out. They won’t partner. They will simply eat power and literally burn the world to make something that’s not as good as the already underwhelming gpt5 to keep that stock price rising because the investors are stupid and need to see buzzword bullshit even if it comes at tremendous cost
This is more about the drive to be a leader in AI than the public goodwill.
The antitrust stuff revealed a lot but one of the major things it revealed is that Google views chatgpt as the biggest existential threat to search. Younger users skip Google now.
Of course this is because Google spent the past 5-10 years abusing their monopoly protected position to worsen their product so user engagement would go up (a more frustrating search experience means you’re more likely to search several queries, being delivered multiple pages filled with ads and tracking bullshit instead of just one).
But they won’t reflect on that and improve their product. They will leave it as is and try to make their shit AI blurb at the top of search work better. This is inherently foolish vs something like chatgpt because google search is typically fed much less robust prompts. They get something like “best bank account” or “2014 nba mvp” whereas users are conditioned to given chatgpt a conversational prompt, “what bank has the best rate for savings accounts right now?”. The former is part of why you see much more misconception, incorrect information, and hallucination with googles ai shit.
But again they won’t reflect on this. They won’t bow out. They won’t partner. They will simply eat power and literally burn the world to make something that’s not as good as the already underwhelming gpt5 to keep that stock price rising because the investors are stupid and need to see buzzword bullshit even if it comes at tremendous cost