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Comment by visarga | Hacker News Reader

> A news website is not a bonsai tree

well said

But if traffic originators (e.g. Google) have a bonsai section that comprises the front half of their results... you can't fault a lot of non-bonsai trees for considering how they might qualify.

At the end of the day, this is Google's mess.

The article summarizes the situation well (clarification added by me):

>> I think CNET is making a mistake, but they’ve also identified a serious problem for the digital news ecosystem: Old content is a burden to carry [because it lacks a viable economic model], and intentionally or not, Google isn’t making that lift any easier.

> you can't fault a lot of non-bonsai trees for considering how they might qualify.

I will 100% fault them for acting on it. Just like I'll fault a company for choosing terrible single use plastics that increase their bottom line a bit, and companies that use AI to reduce head count. You can disagree with a decision even if you understand why it was made.

Companies should be using AI to reduce head count whenever possible. Welfare should be provided by the state, not privatized. Productivity gains are good.

What if people are put out of work by dropping single-use plastics?

> A news website is not a bonsai tree

well said

If the big box store's garden center only sells bonsai trees, then all of the growers will switch to bonsai trees.

Google is the big box store of the internet.

The main argument here is probably that news sites should have some obligation to the historical record. Normal product companies should arguably archive old product documentation in some form but relatively few would argue that they shouldn't regularly prune marketing literature, whitepapers, and other information that gets stale and is in the way of finding current stuff.

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