this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2023
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1044
Google has sent internet into ‘spiral of decline’, claims DeepMind co-founder (www.telegraph.co.uk)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
196 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Google has plunged the internet into a “spiral of decline”, the co-founder of the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) lab has claimed.

Mustafa Suleyman, the British entrepreneur who co-founded DeepMind, said: “The business model that Google had broke the internet.”

He said search results had become plagued with “clickbait” to keep people “addicted and absorbed on the page as long as possible”.

Information online is “buried at the bottom of a lot of verbiage and guff”, Mr Suleyman argued, so websites can “sell more adverts”, fuelled by Google’s technology.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is what led me to Kagi. It’s been so liberating.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Mind elaborating?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

At the risk of sounding like a shill sure! (I’m not, just a happy user)

Kagi is a paid search engine. They just introduced a 10/month plan that made the news which led me to their trial. I signed up a day later.

Because I’m paying money I have the feeling that I’m not the product unlike other free search engines. There’s likely no nefarious manipulation of search results and it’s refreshing to see new features rolling out.

It’s not all roses tho. Your searches are now tied to you and who really knows what’s going on with your data behind the scenes. Everyone needs to make their own decisions based on their priorities.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It’s not all roses tho. Your searches are now tied to you and who really knows what’s going on with your data behind the scenes. Everyone needs to make their own decisions based on their priorities.

Exactly. It feels like we aren't the product but we don't actually know what it costs to run Kagi and whether the $10/mo is sustainable or just a way to reduce the losses till they get sufficient market share. Upon which they might start doing things to recover the losses. I'm also paying for it but this has been at the back of my head. Until they're a non-profit with similar transparency to Wikimedia, it won't rest. Speaking of, if one of the established, reputable internet non-profits like Wikimedia or Mozilla starts a paid search engine, I'd be all over it. I'd pay for it for as long as I can afford it.

Edit:

A bit about this from Kagi.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

DO they geneuinly improve results or you are in it just for privacy ?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

The few times I wasn’t sure I did the same search in google and got similar results so I’m 100% happy.

They even have some nice features like location aware searching, instant answer results (eg a box to convert currency), etc.

Additionally you can weight or even blacklist domains so you can completely remove results from Instagram.