this post was submitted on 25 May 2026
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388
Google is cannibalizing the web to feed AI (www.theregister.com)
submitted 17 hours ago by throws_lemy@reddthat.com to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] borth@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 hours ago

I don't understand how these companies want to seem and think they are so smart by choosing new niche data (scraped) to train AI in a bid to try and make it "smart"....

Has any other living being become "smart" by only ingesting information directly from the Internet? You can train other animals to perform many tasks and can probably say they are smart when they perform them as expected. I doubt any of the training methods is to tape headphones, a screen and sometimes a microphone to their faces forever (I kinda don't wanna know if this false 😢).

The best example we have, is ourselves, and even though we use the Internet, babies are not taught how to walk and talk by only interacting with the Internet.

I feel like I might be saying too much, but I think the best AI we're gonna get is to unplug it from the Internet, and then fucking raise it for 20 years like a normal, super fast-thinking child prodigy. Then just make copies of that and train further by having it go to school for the things needed.

[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 7 hours ago

More Perfect Union did a video on Google's descent into evil. I think it's this one

TLDW: Once Google pivoted from being a search service to an advertising agency, it was motivated to keep users from hyperlinking away from Google, and so offered summaries and alternatives controlled by Alphabet that allowed it to keep offering you ads.

So this AI service is just a natural iteration.

[–] Iusedtobeanalien@lemmy.world 10 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

It's a self defeating strategy as more people turn to ai, less content gets produced so ai becomes static.

I truly believe the token model will kill AI, it will become too expensive

[–] iocase@lemmy.zip 12 points 7 hours ago

It already is too expensive and adding more compute doesn't make it cheaper lol it just causes a race to the bottom among data center providers and an eventual crash there too.

[–] BrightCandle@lemmy.world 131 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

The death of Stackoverflow is one of these events where the site has been completely killed by AI and yet its contents is completely necessary for AI to know about solving programming problems. Its death will mark the end of AIs ability to learn how to solve programming issues. Its cannibalizing itself in the process, as it destroys its sources it destroys its own ability to learn.

[–] artyom@piefed.social 61 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (12 children)

It's not just that, it's shitting where it eats. People are using it to fill the internet with disinformation, then it trains itself on it's own disinformation, and breeds even worse disinformation. This is why AI can never be smarter than it was in 2021.

On top of that, due to the indiscriminate DDOSing of the entire internet by AI bots, websites have been blocking any web crawlers that are not Google, which just contributes to their monopoly.

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[–] Impractical_Island@lemmy.world 5 points 9 hours ago

Only a minute away until Google starts a Soylent Green subsidiary company

[–] Evotech@lemmy.world 4 points 9 hours ago

Honestly I think Google is pretty fucked in the long term

Nobody google anymore. They just ask chat

[–] CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world 67 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

Friends don't let friends use Google.

[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 24 points 15 hours ago (3 children)

I can't remember the name, but when the internet was just starting and there were a lot of search engines with no dominate ones, there was an aggregator program that you could input many search engines into, then use it as the searching tool. It would query all the engines and combine, sort, rank, and remove duplicate finds.

Edit: more specific - It was much like an FTP or torrent program but you'd load up what search engines to use and your search words, and it would actively pull the info then provide a single page with all results.

The reason I mention it is because we're sort of back at that point. Google is failing, Bing never was great, and all the alternatives have their issues, usually with not having the same database to work with. So if you gathered all the best ones, the ones without ties to corporate or AI, then put their results together, maybe you'd have something like what Google was at its peak before "do no evil" got painted over.

Incidentally, Google became what it was/is because it gobbled up a lot of those early search engines' databases. I miss you, Hotbot. You were a good one.

[–] shifty@leminal.space 3 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Was it MetaCrawler? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetaCrawler

SearXNG is the spiritual successor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SearXNG

[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 1 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

No, I don't see mention of it being an application but like Dogpile is a web-based collector.

I did a search myself, but (given how searching sucks now) couldn't find anything. Lots of hits for search engines themselves, but getting past that to other methods back then is difficult.

It was much like an FTP or torrent program but you'd load up what search engines to use and your search words, and it would actively pull the info then provide a single page with all results.

[–] Stopwatch1986@lemmy.ml 1 points 6 hours ago

I thought it was Autonomy. You installed a program, instructed puppies agents, logged out, and while you were offline the puppies searched through several engines. Next time you logged in the findings waited for you. That was the time of 56k modems and metered connections.

[–] notoftenthat@sh.itjust.works 0 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I barely ever used it, but I'm assuming you are remembering gopher.

Gopher remained the most popular means of accessing the internet until 1994

[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 1 points 4 hours ago

Not quite that old, more in the 2000 range based on when I had my PC that I used it on. This was a GUI app for Windows. Wish I had an idea, that was like... too long ago.

[–] PlantJam@lemmy.world 27 points 15 hours ago (7 children)

Search used to be so good. I had an old Honda civic that suddenly wouldn't start. It wasn't the starter, alternator, or battery. I managed to find a forum post with my exact issue, which was that a small rubber piece on the clutch pressed a button to "tell" the starter it was okay to start. Twenty minutes later I had zip tied a piece of plastic into place and had a working car again.

If I tried to diagnose that same issue today, it'd be dozens of SEO garbage slop sites without any actual useful information.

[–] unglueclass23@programming.dev 6 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

I was thinking the same thing recently. It's not the place it once was. But in general the internet has changed a lot. And it's not just AI.

  1. All sorts of paywalls especially in news sites.
  2. Everything is getting centralized into a few sites and they're usually either not poorly indexable or not at all (Discord, facebook, X, Instagram and so on)
  3. Fediverse (Lemmy, Mastodon) also struggles with search engines.
  4. People trying to sell you shit, create a brand even more than before. Because of this all sorts of SEO optimization crap is done like writing BS articles nobody cares about.
  5. AI slop.
  6. Search engines have gotten better of getting rid of "illegal stuff".
  7. A lot of sites are just presentational bloat with no substance. Very cool looking landing pages with all sorts of cool animations but when you need to actually find the information that you need... the same UI usually gets in the way.

Oh and now we're getting into age verification crap also yay

[–] PlantJam@lemmy.world 5 points 10 hours ago

An example of number 4, there's a poster I've seen on reddit that's posting very relevant content, but then every post ends with "@xxxxxxxx on all socials". It just takes the whole thing from content I might want to engage with to the exact opposite.

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[–] vrek@programming.dev 7 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

I think the old aggregator you were thinking of was dogpile.com

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[–] Flagstaff@programming.dev 12 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

DuckDuckGo and Ecosia?

[–] FarraigePlaisteach@lemmy.world 10 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Ecosia have planted 250,000+ trees so far and publish their accounts every month. I can’t think of a better option, unless there is a niche requirement.

[–] RiverRabbits@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

they burn all their efforts by pushing genAI tech on their platform

[–] FarraigePlaisteach@lemmy.world 6 points 15 hours ago (4 children)

Isn’t that hyperbole rather than truth? They’re still carbon negative.

They don’t provide AI by default (at least, I don’t get it). So people like us can continue to not use AI and the hundreds of million who use it every day can still support tree planting.

I don’t like AI, but if they don’t add it they could risk limiting their reach and environmental goals.

[–] RiverRabbits@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

AI companies do not release any numbers themselves for carbon emissions. Therefore, companies that use AI cannot in any certainty claim to be carbon negative or neutral, because they have to count the supply chain emissions as well.

not adding AI does not stifle environmental goals, in fact you can only truthfully claim to strive for carbon goals if you do not use AI. After all, there is a reason that Microsoft abandoned their emission goals with AI as the cited reason first and foremost, which shows how incredibly dirty AI can be, even if no one releases any sensible metrics.

[–] FarraigePlaisteach@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago

AI companies do not release any numbers themselves for carbon emissions. I think the EU is even helping them keep that "operationally sensitive information" private, which is a shame.

not adding AI does not stifle environmental goals I can't agree or disagree here. I know the demand for AI is huge: hundreds of millions of users per day and at least a billion per week. If Ecosia is seen not to have this feature, I would consider it possible that it hurts their adoption and therefore their goals.

which shows how incredibly dirty AI can be, even if no one releases any sensible metrics. Yes. I'm not sure how much solace the "world greenest AI" slogan can really offer in that context. https://blog.ecosia.org/ecosia-ai/ - but when I'm recommending search to someone, I recommend Ecosia over Google, Bing, DDG, Qwant, Mojeek, etc. simply because I think they are more of a net positive than the other options.

Who knows, maybe in a year or twos time I'll look back and regret it when more information surfaces. But they've been sensible enough until now with their operational choices to reach tree-planting goals.

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[–] Yliaster@lemmy.world 10 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Startpage and Mojeek.

DDG has contracts w Microslop.

[–] Mwa@thelemmy.club 8 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (2 children)

Startpage uses google btw, Mojeek is decent. (I like Mojeek backend with SearXNG.)

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[–] DylanMc6@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

We more less vibe-coding and more coders with thigh-high striped socks.

[–] Impractical_Island@lemmy.world 3 points 9 hours ago

Then the dating pool I chase can now support me! Wonderful!

[–] greyscale@lemmy.grey.ooo 4 points 9 hours ago

were you typing with your left hand?

[–] schwim@piefed.zip 17 points 16 hours ago

It's the same arc every monopolistic corporation has taken before it, AI is just accelerating the pace of consuming your customer/product because profits must always increase.

There will be no large scale shift from these experiences because most people are either ok, apathetic or blissfully ignorant to the situation, the best you can do is to remove yourself from the exploitation of the userbase. Linux instead of Windows or Android, Almost any search engine other than Google, fediverse instead of reddit, etc.

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