This was an interesting dilemma because it was very clear that the money was way less than the loss in ad revenue due to traffic drop, but it was also clear that if we wouldn’t take the deal, a more desperate competitor would, which would result in the same traffic loss but without the extra google money. So the company took the deal.
History repeats itself here, with the difference that instead of paying for the data, the ai crawlers simply take it for free.
In this context, if Google is going to give me the recipe without having to scroll through the story, that seems like a win to me.
The ad-revenue driven Internet of web 2.0 is finally dead and I'm not sure I'm all that sad.
It would be nice to find something better than an ad-revenue driven web, but I'm not sure this is it. We'll find out I guess...
Sure they are. I can attest that musicians will gladly publish their music even when no recompense is offered. Surely culinary artists are the same.
This is just disruption.
No. Temporarily it’s good for the consumer. Ultimately it is bad for the consumer, because as prices drop, so to does quality.
Also, at some point even the ad-laden websites will die, and then Googles sources will be extinguished.
I think it's a good tradeoff.
AI summarization has already causes issues for sites like rtings where people are no longer visiting the site but still making use of the data presented there. Leading to rtings not getting enough traffic to continue to post their data.
It is an existential crisis for websites and when they go away it'll be an existential crisis for AI.
I may be strange and unusual, but I just have never cared about my Google ranking. I know this makes me out of the ordinary among site owners but I have been humming along fine.
This certainly will disrupt traffic but for some of my sites I honestly think this is a good thing. I want you to want to be there, not just stumble upon my site because you happen to hit the right search keyword. Plus if it gets bad, this does create a new opportunity for others with cross linking and search.
My target market is more technical then that so likely, nothing would change for me. Again, I recognize the impact of Google's dominance for some, but if the "attestation" isn't helpful and only hinders using services that people have come to rely on, there will be push back.
I also have been advocating for years for everyone in my circle to avoid using Chrome. A homogenized browser market is a risk, and Chrome is the new IE. I hope you are also a part of the effort to advocate for browser diversity.
Do you depend on site visitors for making a living? That's what this is about.
I know that sites relying on ad income will and are being hurt tremendously by this effort on Google's part. However, if you are in the startup space and make money on services you offer, search should be one of several strategies you are deploying for user growth.
And here I thought denying ad revenue to websites was the morally superior way to navigate the web...
What about the stories of marketing managers who learned months after the fact that their credit card had expired and their google ad spend had ceased with no affect on traffic? Google isn't always an effective promotional vehicle.
this kills the entire internet vibe of the 90s, early 2k
FTFY: "couple of decades since has become". The vibes of passion-driven 1990s started to be overwhelmed by the din of money right when the Internet has become a major commerce venue, some time in early 2000s.
(It doesn't work for ad-funded writing, but while I have substantial sympathy there this has historically been an unpopular argument on HN)
This also could have been fine, it can bring back authenticity however for this to happen no one should be making money from it. Instead, only megacorps make money and they can just ignore your ideas and generate theirs. They control the distribution and the supply now.
If your site is about your product, Google won't be able to serve the sign-up page from AI; the traffic would come your way. Same for a site that sell something: the traffic you're interested in would arrive at your checkout page.
Paid-content sites and ad-supported sites are screwed though, on top of their being screwed by archive.is and ad blockers.
If instead the purpose of your website is to manipulate users for financial gain (for instance by showing media attempting to manipulate their purchasing decisions, after receiving a bribe from a vendor), and the information is just a way to lure users, then maybe this malicious business model will finally be no longer possible.
(Torment Nexus rules apply here)
Websites may go back to being simply labors of love.
The situation may be even worse. Back in the labor of love era, at least webmasters could get feedback from readers. In the LLM era, readers may not even know that the site exists. Without feedback/community, the overall quality of those sites will decrease over time.
ChatGPT/Claude does this today. I barely click or care for the source when they already have me the info I wanted.
My speculation is all information worth anything is going to be behind some kind of wall.
Maybe I'm just #builtdifferent, but I click these a lot. Especially if I'm trying to research or make a decision on something, I want the actual source and not the potentially-fudged summary.
Not to mention the hallucinations
Similarly, if I use Gemini uses a website for an answer, it should pay something to those sites for the information it gathered. Sites would need to sign up to earn via Google, and I'd imagine there would be a certain threshold to cross to make it worth cutting checks... but that would make all these AI search tools feel much less scummy while providing site owners an incentive to keep sharing information on the internet.
Where a model like this would get messy is with sites like reddit. It's a very popular source for AI search, but the value comes from the users, not the platform itself.
The problem with all this AI/llm stuff is that end users doesn't even know your tiny site with a lot of useful information exists at all.
This depends on implementation. I primarily use Kagi for any LLM stuff. I cites pretty much everything and links out to the source. I regularly use this for search. The normal search results may not have what I need, but a line in the AI results sounds better and I click through to the source to get more context.
I find clicking through to the source is important, as I've often seen the AI get it wrong. The page has what I need on it, but the AI grabbed the wrong thing and got it backward. I'm probably in the minority, I'm guessing most people don't use LLMs like this.
As far as I know, you don't have a choice. They have no obligation to respect your wishes, and LLMs are legally allowed to scrape & republish your content.
I have no obligation to not send all scraper-looking traffic to a black hole full of zip bombs.
But fine. How about I just...don't respond to those requests at all. I have no obligation to send them data period.
Disclaimer: his website is for hosting malware for "testing" purposes. Testing how well AI can't deal with it.
Google has always crawled your site and been an arse! Now you get to decide whether they are hallucinating!
You can drop pointers on Masto and other socials to your sites - that has not changed.
Do we need something else? ie you drop a link to somewhere else.
Mention
Site traffic
Mechanisms might exist to make you think you have one, the same way copywrite should prevent millions of books being gobbled up by TheZuck but ultimately do you really have a choice?
Rules and laws don't exists for you.
this has been done before, quite often, but toward ends morally askew.