Google would greatly prefer if you didn’t click on X because the moment you do, you’ve left Google and they’ve mostly lost their ability to present you with advertising. You read that right: the reason you go to Google is to find other high-quality stuff that they don’t want you to actually see. My favorite attempt was AMP, Accelerated Mobile Pages, where publishers built lightweight copies of their content, and Google served them from their own servers. Yes, you were promised a traffic advantage, but you lose control over design, ads, and analytics.

I highly recommend you read the whole article before reading my comments.

rands makes three claims - three dots, if you will ;)

Claim 1: Google is incentivized to lock users on their properties because it can monetize their attention.

Claim 2: AI generated answers reduce visits to the original sources, undermining (current) internet economics.

Claim 3: Human generated knowledge on the web is very valuable; a world without the current creative internet is poor-er.

IMHO, the third claim is compelling; the second has substantial evidence; and the first I humbly disagree with.

More critically, I don’t think Claim 1 is a requirement for Claim 2 or Claim 3 to be true.

Nota bene: I am a Xoogler.

tl;dr- I disagree with Rands because Google’s incentives are very material to serve your need as the highest priority. Google will generate far more money (and optionality) by serving your need as well as possible and ensure that you maintain a search habit than any short term ad load by holding you hostage. In addition, alternatives truly are a click away.

Consider any of the metrics that Google search (in)famously optimizes for - click through rate, meaningful clickthroughs (where the user doesn’t come back to google), search preference, market search etc. They are all need based for a reason. Google truly believe(d/s) that doing the right thing by the user will earn them a chance to also make money the right way. It’s to build a durable habit for the user.

This because Google doesn’t monetize your attention. It needs your attention but it actually monetizes your intent. Your attention’s marginal utility is low.

We also need to accept that this is what users want. Rands takes umbrage with Google but I’d argue that if Google didn’t do this, users would have happily shifted to a search engine that did. Google’s getting the boot here only because it was so pivotal in creating the previous market that helped the web stay viable.

Google is a convenient villain even though it doesn’t monetize attention (modulo YouTube), and would need to myopically make an active choice to sabotage its standing with its users. This is entirely possible, but unlikely.

But, what of the human creation, and connection?

I posit that human creativity and open sharing was never motivated by commercial success. To wit, the world has more written thoughts than ever before - even if some are still within siloes that are getting closed.

I posit that people will still write to think, will share more freely even if every single LLM slurps it all up to serve answers to people. And that’s the beauty of the web. It was never static. It is intended to be a repository of the thoughts and creations of humans - and soon - bots. That central repo came before monetization, and Google and will stay post monetization and Google.

We just have to go through the hard period and come out of it.

Source: randsinrepose.com