This is all extrapolated from google’s self published survey of how their users interact with their search results. Approximately 60% of users don’t click anything after a search. Personally I think that is because users have found their results to be seo garbage and not worth clicking on… but that’s just my opinion.
Of course they don’t click anything. Google search has just become a front-end for Gemini, the answer is “served” up right at the top and most people will just take that for Gospel.
Even without Gemini, many of my searches are covered by the few word snippets from the top few results. Most of my searches are quick queries with quick answers, usually not me embarking on some huge research effort.
I’ve watched a lot of students do a search after I tell them to research something, look through a few of the summaries, then look at me in defeat. I have to tell them to actually click some links to try and find an answer
I mourn for humanity.
I went to college for networking but the most productive class I’ve ever had where I learned the most about the internet was instead back in high school. This teacher would make 20 page packets with the most obscure questions like what’s the weight of model number 62xRG4 (some obscure car part or something) and he told us to google it. We would spend entire classes just searching for information we would never use, but it drilled into me how to go about finding the information I need. It’s been utterly invaluable. Thank you Mr Ward.
I love this, so much. Blue Links have been the most critical pass to my future, across my entire life.
Purple links often, too. I can’t imagine surrendering the ability to sift through information with my own eyes and hands and brain.
Yeah I think we’re going to be grappling with this issue for at least the next decade. The traditional web model falls apart under AI
To be fair, the traditional web models were falling apart prior to AI as well. We’ve gone so far past “ad driven” that Everything has to be full of ads and clickbait to drive revenue just to run the infrastructure, let alone pay for the pages creation and upkeep. Journalists and developers, services and goods are all using adword soup to try to get anything close to a useful revenue stream and it’ll just keep getting worse until we figure out a better business model. We’re going to increasingly see paywalls to try to make up for that, but a large part of people on the internet won’t want to spend money on quality sources when they use to be able to get it for free. It’s been a race to the bottom for a while and it’s at a point that isn’t sustainable long term. AI just accelerates that to the next level.
What’s challenging about paywalls and not wanting to spend money is not necessarily not wanting to spend, but convenience and cost. If it costs me 10 cents for each blog or tutorial or github page I look at while working on a project, or 1 cent for every funny video, that adds up. And do I have to put my credit card in for every site? Hope that every site has good enough security to prevent payment information leaks?
And I don’t think anyone is interested in a Netflix-style internet that fractures into 6 different subscriptions to get every site you need on the web.
Some sort of universal microtransaction layer is the dream. I believe there’s also a proposed web standard for it.
Scroll was also making it work before they got bought by Twitter
That’s exactly Elon Musk’s goal with making Twitter a payment platform.
Hah. No. That goes all the way back to the 90ies. Tim Berners-Lee proposed that standard.
Did I say Elon came up with the idea? I said that’s his goal.
Also not saying it like it’s a good thing, just stating a fact.
Scroll was just for reading websites though. Musk seems to want We chat style super app
The traditional web was long gone anyways. There are like a dozent sites you find for any Google query. It’s so hard to find small hidden treasure on the internet.
The web doesn’t have a business model, cloudflair, you do. And nobody cares because you suck.
Eh, Cloudflare provides a pretty good service for a very reasonable price.
But yeah, the web doesn’t have a business model in the same way a town square doesn’t, yet you can make a business work in both areas. Make a compelling product and people will pay you for it.
Cloudflare provides a pretty good service for a very reasonable price.
You mean selling fingerprinted user data to advertisers?
Ever had one of your servers DDoSed before? Clearly not
You mean product that literally makes web unusable for many and tracks your every single step with extremely invasive fingerprinting techniques? That product?
I’d say that getting your server DDoSed makes it a whoooole lot less usable.
That’s a big reason why I don’t use their security layer, mostly just their domain registrar. They have a ton of products that don’t involve tracking your users.
Everyone is too busy doomscrolling TikTok to notice.
Cloudflare already ruined the web way before AI was even a thing.
In what way?
maybe their business model. trust me. they’ll find a way to monetize the zero click internet too. then it’s back to square one
I believe this is why tech execs and investors are so hot on pushing AI into everything. They’ll control everyone’s digital experience and you can 100% count on being force fed ads and paid propaganda. Embrace, extend, extinguish
Yep. They have direct control over the flow of information.
Honestly, Metal Gear Solid 2 was on fucking point.
And so was 4.
I tried playing 2 again recently because I had the same thought, and I had to stop because my wife would not stop laughing at Rose’s dialogue. God, I wish Kojima had ever met a woman.
And she’s 100% justified. The older you get the more appearant it becomes that he’s bad at writing dialogue and story. He’s a tendency of using controvencies to create drama and it often falls flat, if not into eye-roll territory.
I could not stop cringing during Death Stranding. I had to fast forward the ending. I imagine Margaret Qualley being completely bewildered when they were capturing her character’s twin soul melding scene.
I don’t necessarily think he’s bad at writing dialogue and story, I think he’s mostly just bad at writing women. As I’ve gotten older, I went from taking Metal Gear Solid super seriously to treating it like nuclear/techno Evil Dead
Yeah, we’re just less experienced and have fewer expectations when we’re young. We were much more impressionable then.
Guys in general are bad at portraying women, as I understand. That’s on top of being bad in general for Kojima, I think. There’s a funny interview with the MGS2 English translator Agness Kaku where she comments that the writing at times is high school fanfic level.
What parts of Rose’s dialogue made her laugh so much?
I could tell that it was commentary on the lonely and reserved lives that was stereotypical of gamers in the early to mid 2000s. So much of that game was meant to be directed towards the player, I wonder if it fell on deaf ears for her because she’s not really the target audience.
Yeah, so much for all those promises of disintermediation being a benefit of the web.
Can someone check in with the inventor of the web and ask him what the web’s business model is?
Anyone know Al Gore’s email?
Are they still defending the fact they host Stormfront?
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Host_ed_, right? They did drop them at some point, I thought.
nobody is going to want to create new content when they get paid nothing or almost nothing for doing so.
that’s a lie
People create content knowing others are going to get filthy rich off it and they’ll get nothing in return. Except total loss of privacy.
Agreed.
Replace “nobody” with “nobody who contributes to society; nobody I gave a shit about in the first place” and you’re on track.
just because it’s free doesn’t mean it’s worthless, and charging for content doesn’t make it valuable
so basically back to internet 1.0, sounds good actually.
Old youtube was a pretty cool place and nobody got paid
Good. Maybe we can go back to paying for our services instead of getting tracked everywhere we go.
That’s not what will happen. We will have to pay AND be tracked. They are not going to give anything up.
Time to look for other services then.
Besides the internet?
My food subscription is about to run out!!
Meshtastic is free… now imagine remaking the internet on our own terms. (blackjack + hookers)
When Orwell predicted universal surveillance he never anticipated that the people themselves would install the cameras, let alone pay a subscription.
Err… you think you’re not being tracked when you spend money?
Wow.
The internet was founded on the sponsorship model where content was free and ads were ubiquitous. while I completely agree with you that I would rather pay for the product instead of being the product, at this informs every single sign up I make on the internet, I think it’s self deluding to think there’s any great again to go back to. The philosophy was always there, the execution just wasn’t possible until they had finished building their walled gardens
This sounds more like “everyone is on TikTok and Instagram and will only ever be using TikTok and Instagram”.
Yeah well maybe the web shouldn’t be a business
That’s not gonna happen, and I even disagree with the statement but I can see the merit in it.
That being said the new business model will be the old business model, where everything is paid for. And I do not think that’s so bad, for example I’d pay for a browser if it respects my privacy.
America: “No money = no purpose”
the o’l capitalist shalamalama ding-dong…
god what I wouldnt give to go back to the days of the mid 90s, when the internet was nothing more than a collection of tech weirdos, with websites being nothing more than passion projects with no advertising, no SEO, no search engines, etc etc.
Tried a few searches. “no results”. Oh well
It’s a small web search engine so there is not a result for everything (as there was in the early Internet). The ‘Explore’ feature is probably more entertaining (stumble upon-esque) than using it as an actual search engine.
Kagi isn’t bad at not serving up crap, but it requires a subscription eventually.
Will give a spin
there was plenty of advertising on america online though almost ever keyword was to a business that was an advertisement.
i do agree that web 1.0 and the 90s internet was superior
will give a spinSorry answered wrong comment. Big finger issue
Can’t we go back? What’s stopping you?
Nothing, really.
We’re the only ones stopping ourselves. The 90s and everything that made is ‘great’ is still here, we just choose not to use it.
the pesky linearity of time as we understand it.
I’m going to risk that going back to personal websites would be a blast. And people would enjoy it.
People on neocities: “what’s stopping all of you?”
The small-web exists and thrives in its little bubble of creativity
what is that, some successor to geocities? or is the naming convention purely coincidental
Successor by a small community, forget the chain of events but, basically yeah.
Does self hosting, at home, really pays off nowadays, or does hiring server space is a mandatory requirement?
Neocities? what even is…
Oh.
Such style. Such creativity. Personality in design! It’s like looking back into a lost age from when things were allowed to be fun. None of this ‘advertiser safe minimalism’.
This makes my brain do the happy chemicals.
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You can’t say something like that without bringing forth some arguments…
I’m not buying whatever a billionaire nepo baby CEO monopoly owner is pedaling. Let’s hear what some labor leaders have to say about it for a change.
i’d like to be a labor leader, but i’m not (yet). Yet here’s my opinion:
Knowledge was meant to be free since the beginning. I look at ideas as human-cultivated, carefully cultured viruses. They’re packages of information that live within a host.
They’re a lot less aggressive than their feral counterparts, but they’re still individual beings who want to spread. Holding back knowledge is unnatural, and the internet should be free.
Yeah, the odds are really stacked against businesses when it comes to sharing information.
The fact they’ve been able to keep such a stranglehold on it for so long is really a testament to how much excess power they have over our societies.
Future generations are laughing at us, and rightfully so.
But it’s felony contempt of busoness model!!
peddling
Nice. For a second I thought I got one of those Nicole DMs lol.
yes but cloudflare defending garbage people who dox trans people is also killing the web
I didn’t even know about that until now. But how does that affect AI and websites?
I didn’t come here for heartwarming stories; yet here I am.
Trying to comment in this thread and it tells me “Toastify is awesome”? wth?
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lmao, I’m laughing so hard at this! It’s probably displaying the wrong text for an error.
@[email protected] do you have more information on this?
