this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2023
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I commented on the article forum. TL;DR What matters to me is not that Google (or whatever search engine) is the best but is an adequate search engine. And all the search engines currently suck in contrast to how effective they were in 2013.
If we had a state-run search engine that worked as poorly as Google does, we'd hear no end of how the ideology of socialized services is awful, so if Google is the best that the market has to offer, that is far removed from good enough.
Part of that isn't really the fault of the search engines though, SEO optimization is heavily abused and with AI writing for websites now, identifying what's worth indexing/returning vs ignoring because it's garbage is basically a game of whack-a-mole
Well, is it important to put the blame on someone, or is it more important that society has access to a functional search engine. The AI thing is very new. The enshittification of Google precedes the generative content boom.
Similarly working to appoint blame of pollution emissions and lack of alternative transit has not gotten us fast rail or safer cars or much in reducing greenhouse emissions.
Although the interests of large corporations in retaining their profits and political power exceeds the interests of the public in the current regime.
The AI part may be new, but the SEO abuse is not. The AI stuff just makes an already bad situation worse and getting worse faster than ever.
Don't take what I'm saying as defending Google or anything, they clearly could and should do better, but even if they were doing everything right it's only part of the problem right now.
It's important to identify the cause of a problem if you hope to fix it.
Assuming the intent is to manage problems by rooting out causes (typically plural) and addressing them, yes.
If the intent is to preserve the status quo my diffusing responsibility to other involved parties then it's about deflecting blame.
So if Google is less about providing a quality public service than increasing revenues while providing less service (the latter is to be expected of a publicly owned company following shareholder primacy) then it's moreninterested in deflecting blame than finding public-serving solutions.