this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2025
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Google admits the open web is in ‘rapid decline’ (www.theverge.com)
submitted 2 days ago by artifex@piefed.social to c/technology@lemmy.world
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For months, Google has maintained that the web is “thriving,” AI isn’t tanking traffic, and its search engine is sending people to a wider variety of websites than ever. But in a court filing from last week, Google admitted that “the open web is already in rapid decline” (with regard to advertising, kinda-sorta)

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[–] Hikki88@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

If you said ‘we got the internet thanks to farmers’ that would be indisputable, everything flowed from that.

And why not? Philosophically, a strong argument can be made that the Agricultural Revolution laid the groundwork for everything we know today, including the internet. I don’t see why admitting that would be a problem as it’s simply the truth.

I don’t see why an internet couldn’t emerge in other economic contexts because internet technology depends on physics and those laws transcend any and all economic systems. We already know this because almost every jurisdiction has the internet.

I never disputed that it couldn’t be done, but it’s still a hypothetical. The reality is that capitalists stepped in, and the internet spread like wildfire. Could it be done in other scenarios? Maybe. But pointing out reality shouldn’t be inconvenient.

The influence of capitalism on the internet has been a mixed bag. e-commerce: good. App ecosystem: ranging from good to addiction health crisis. Walled gardens and enshitification: bad. Misinformation and radicalisation of political groups: dire, potentially an existential threat.

Everything has positives and negatives, everything is a mixed bag. People try to label everything in black and white boxes but reality is mostly gray. Still, it doesn’t change the fact that the internet is in people’s hands because of capitalism.