Post by @emilymbender@dair-community.social

@emilymbender@dair-community.social · 1 hour ago

Wow some terrible reporting about Google's latest horrible ideas about how to distort information access in the name of "convenience" (or something):

https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/19/google-search-as-you-know-it-is-over/

A short thread
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TechCrunch

Google Search as you know it is over | TechCrunch

Google is transforming Search from a list of links into an AI-powered experience filled with conversational answers, autonomous agents, and interactive interfaces — a shift that could further reduce traffic to publishers across the web.

Akash Mondal

@theakashmondal@mstdn.social · 8 seconds ago

@emilymbender I use #DuckDuckGo

d@nny disc@ mc²

@hipsterelectron@circumstances.run · 49 minutes ago

@emilymbender i'm fucking weepi ng

Information-gathering agents are an evolution of Google

i have never observed google demonstrate any behavior that struck me as evidence of them gathering any form of information

Links will become an afterthought

that reminds me how they own the w3c and use it to ensure no one who has ever created a webpage will ever be able to show it to anyone without exposing them to the most openly broken cryptography i've ever seem

There’s little time left for publishers to adapt.

openly gloating

which will eventually be free

that's right. we will all be free. that's a cryptographic guarantee

Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)

@emilymbender@dair-community.social · 1 hour ago

5 years ago (2021) Google researchers Metzler et al put out a preprint talking about how LLMs would change information access ("Rethinking Search"). It was full of TERRIBLE ideas, and Chirag Shah and I wrote a reply ("Situating Search"):

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3498366.3505816

Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)

@emilymbender@dair-community.social · 1 hour ago

We followed a couple of years later with further arguments about, inter alia, protecting the information ecosystem:
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649468

While Nora Lindemann was writing about similar ideas:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00146-024-01944-w

SpringerLink

Chatbots, search engines, and the sealing of knowledges - AI & SOCIETY

In 2023, online search engine provider Microsoft integrated a language model that provides direct answers to search queries into its search engine Bing. Shortly afterwards, Google also introduced a similar feature to its search engine with the launch of Google Gemini. This introduction of direct answers to search queries signals an important and significant change in online search. This article explores the implications of this new search paradigm. Drawing on Donna Haraway’s theory of Situated Knowledges and Rainer Mühlhoff’s concept of Sealed Surfaces, I introduce the term Sealed Knowledges to draw attention to the increasingly difficult access to the plurality of potential answers to search queries through the output of a singular, authoritative, and plausible text paragraph. I argue that the integration of language models for the provision of direct answers into search engines is based on a de-situated and disembodied understanding of knowledge and affects the subjectivities of its users. At the same time, the sealing of knowledges can lead to an increasing spread of misinformation and may make marginalized knowledge increasingly difficult to find. The paper concludes with an outlook on how to resist the increasing sealing of knowledges in online search.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649468

Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)

@emilymbender@dair-community.social · 1 hour ago

But all the academic papers in the world showing why something is a bad idea won't stop companies from doing it, if it's profitable and/or fits into their quasi-religious beliefs that "AI" is the future, alas.

So let's look at what Google is up to now, or at least says they are, via TechCrunch as stenographer:

Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)

@emilymbender@dair-community.social · 1 hour ago

Not satisfied to cut people off from the important sense-making of looking at information in its context and finding and navigating different perspectives (what "AI overviews" do), Google also wants to tell you what to search for:

Screencap from linked article:
With the revamped Search experience, the new search box simply expands to accommodate longer, more conversational queries, rather than making you decide what type of search experience or mode you want to choose at the start of your query. It will also have a new AI-powered query suggestion system that goes beyond autocomplete to help people craft more complex and nuanced queries, Google says. — Screencap from linked article: With the revamped Search experience, the new search box simply expands to accommodate longer, more conversational queries, rather than making you decide what type of search experience or mode you want to choose at the start of your query. It will also have a new AI-powered query suggestion system that goes beyond autocomplete to help people craft more complex and nuanced queries, Google says.

~17 more replies

Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)

@emilymbender@dair-community.social · 1 hour ago

How infantilizing --- you thought you were looking to find something that someone else wrote on the web. But woah! Now you've been "dropped into" an "interactive experience". Yeah, Google can just fuck right off with that.

Screencap from linked article:
Instead of returning a simple list of links, Google Search will drop users into AI-powered interactive experiences at times. Google is also introducing tools that can dispatch “information agents” to gather information on a user’s behalf, along with tools that let users build personalized mini apps tailored to their needs. — Screencap from linked article: Instead of returning a simple list of links, Google Search will drop users into AI-powered interactive experiences at times. Google is also introducing tools that can dispatch “information agents” to gather information on a user’s behalf, along with tools that let users build personalized mini apps tailored to their needs.

Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)

@emilymbender@dair-community.social · 1 hour ago

Look, I hate pointy-clicky interfaces as much as the next Gen-Xer (let me use the keyboard, dammit) but it is so weird to reduce the important, and importantly effortful, work of navigating the information ecosystem to the apparent drudgery of clicking on links that are (*shudder*) blue!!!

2 media

Screencap from linked article:
Google is also introducing agentic capabilities and AI-powered interactive features into the search experience. This means people will spend even less time clicking the traditional blue links that Google Search used to return. — Screencap from linked article: Google is also introducing agentic capabilities and AI-powered interactive features into the search experience. This means people will spend even less time clicking the traditional blue links that Google Search used to return.

Screencap from linked article:
This shift means that “searching the web” will increasingly be performed by AI agents rather than humans. Instead, people will focus more on acting on the information those agents provide instead of manually clicking links. — Screencap from linked article: This shift means that “searching the web” will increasingly be performed by AI agents rather than humans. Instead, people will focus more on acting on the information those agents provide instead of manually clicking links.

Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)

@emilymbender@dair-community.social · 1 hour ago

Here is where it really starts to show that this journalist is just lightly paraphrasing a press release. "Links will become an afterthought," will they? What is your evidence for that confident statement about the future?

Screencap from linked article:
Links will become an afterthought with the coming changes to the Search results experience, which builds on Google’s earlier launches of AI search features, like its short summaries known as AI Overviews and its conversational search, AI Mode. — Screencap from linked article: Links will become an afterthought with the coming changes to the Search results experience, which builds on Google’s earlier launches of AI search features, like its short summaries known as AI Overviews and its conversational search, AI Mode.

Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)

@emilymbender@dair-community.social · 1 hour ago

Spot the magical thinking here. No, the "AI" isn't making sense of anything. It's making papier-mache of the input, and preventing the use from doing the sense-making.

Also, is that the Pokemon sense of "evolution"?

Screencap from linked article:
In 2003, Google launched Google Alerts, a change-detection service that emailed users when new web results matched their search terms. The web was smaller and more manageable then, of course, so this became a part of many information workers’ toolsets. (That service still exists in some form, but is no longer the way most web users go about aquiring new information.)

Information-gathering agents are an evolution of Google Alerts. Beyond spotting changes, they can make sense of them, too. — Screencap from linked article: In 2003, Google launched Google Alerts, a change-detection service that emailed users when new web results matched their search terms. The web was smaller and more manageable then, of course, so this became a part of many information workers’ toolsets. (That service still exists in some form, but is no longer the way most web users go about aquiring new information.) Information-gathering agents are an evolution of Google Alerts. Beyond spotting changes, they can make sense of them, too.

Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)

@emilymbender@dair-community.social · 1 hour ago

To expand just a little bit: the point of a Google Alert was to gain access to things that people were saying about a topic that you were tracking, which you otherwise might not turn up. And every (blue, even!) link that you clicked on brought you to a web page you could examine to get a sense of who was writing, in what context, and why.

Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)

@emilymbender@dair-community.social · 1 hour ago

More stenography here. Google starting shoving the "AI Overviews" into query results as an opt-out situation. That is, you have to take action to have them not pop up. I don't doubt they are *shown to* 2.5 billion monthly users, but that doesn't mean they are used by as many or desired by them.

Screencap from linked article:
AI Overviews are now used by more than 2.5 billion monthly users; meanwhile, its conversational search mode, launched last year, now tops 1 billion monthly users. (ChatGPT, for comparison, has 900 million weekly active users, as of earlier this year. This suggests that ChatGPT is now seeing more frequent engagement, with users coming back repeatedly throughout the week, while Google has more total unique people touching its AI features over the course of a month.) — Screencap from linked article: AI Overviews are now used by more than 2.5 billion monthly users; meanwhile, its conversational search mode, launched last year, now tops 1 billion monthly users. (ChatGPT, for comparison, has 900 million weekly active users, as of earlier this year. This suggests that ChatGPT is now seeing more frequent engagement, with users coming back repeatedly throughout the week, while Google has more total unique people touching its AI features over the course of a month.)

Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)

@emilymbender@dair-community.social · 1 hour ago

The comparsion to ChatGPT in the above screencap also really shows the PR origins of this piece. Google is clearly very very concerned about losing their advantage in this market to OpenAI.

Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)

@emilymbender@dair-community.social · 1 hour ago

NO NO NO NO NO! Flashy polished looking webpages that no one has accountability for run absolutely counter to the common good when it comes to a health information ecosystem AND an informed public.

(Also, "Antigravity"? Yeah, you want us to think this is very cool science fiction and/or magic. Not buying it.)