it's the same as toll booth operators complaining about fastpass
Before if I asked a question, the top 3 results would be StackOverflow. I'd click into the first one and find out that the question was subtly different than mine making its answer useless, but it included a lot of similar words. Go back and click into the second one. It's exactly my problem, asked three years ago, no answer. Go back and click into the third one. Same question, but it's been answered. Great. But the accepted answer has a score of -3 and another answer has a score of 5. So which one do I follow? Whoops, it's actually neither of them, because the library has broken both of those workflows.
Now I get my answer right away 90% of the time. And if I don't then I scroll down and I'm not worse off than I was 2 years ago.
> This isn’t just a me problem. You don’t have to be a writer to have your livelihood be dependent upon Google search results. Small-business owners need Google to reach potential new customers. Students, many of them working on school-issued Chromebooks made by Google, need it to research term papers and study for final exams. In its earliest form, Google dot-com was the perfect utility for all of these people and millions more.
But I agree with you (despite being predisposed to agreeing with the author) that the invective doesn't quite land because they don't do quite enough work to ensure we're on their side in understanding how we might be affected.
I'll just take this space to note that folks that feel similarly to the author should try Kagi, as they let you choose how much AI you want rather than forcing a chat interface onto you or directing you away from links.
> it's the same as toll booth operators complaining about fastpass
I think your analogy would work better if toll booth operators built the roads, the cars, the toll booths themselves, and then were all replaced by fastpass.
but much of the article describes how Google is trying to deploy their final solution for intermediation. their attempts to 'googlify' things like grocery shopping and job searching pretty much failed. but now, they are promoting a model where, finally, all information they present has been googlified. they are not a phone book or card catalog, but now the entire library. there aren't original sources any more, just what Google has decided to tell you about something.