Google continues to make changes to Google Search. After introducing AI mode and some other AI features recently, it is now reportedly testing removing the trusted Search-button for another round of AI infusions.
The report comes from Search Engine Watch noting that some users are now seeing the new AI first search page now instead. While the search field remains for now, Google has removed the search button for three AI-powered features: Create images, ask about files and brainstorm. The “I am feeling lucky” button remains for now though.
While that is not a big problem for users who know that you can simply press the Enter-key to start a search, it may confuse some Google users nevertheless. They may activate the AI mode button, which opens an interface to interact with Google’s AI Gemini.
Pressing the three other buttons starts other activities, but not the classic search. According to Search Engine Watch, two of the three AI features work without a Google account, at least for now. Those are “ask about files” and brainstorm. Only create image remains locked for Google account customers.
So, is this a problem? Probably for some users who used the button all the time to start their searches and do not know about pressing the Enter-key.
The test shows that Google continues to focus on pushing AI options to Google Search and some of its other products, such as Google Maps or Gmail. I’m not a huge fan of this. Not because I have something against AI, but because it is causing problems for the remaining independent site owners and blog writers out there.
Ever since Google’s Panda update, things have been going downhill for many. Now with Google keeping more and more visitors to its search engine on its own site, thanks to AI delivering the answer right on site, even larger publishers have faced declines in traffic.
google is absolute shit
Days of open Internet as we know it are gone. Gatekeepers (Google, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, Amazon, and others) with AI-created walls raised barriers of convenience to prevent people from leaving their services. I hope that a lot of sites will survive, but it is definitely some kind of extinction-level event.
To Monty Python’s “Spam” (Spam, Spam, Spam) we can now add ‘AI, AI, AI” ((Yuh, yuh, yuh, yuh, yuh, aye-aye!). No idea where this AI hysteria is leading but I won’t embark on that trip, as far as I can avoid it. AI yes, when I decide to, not forced, enforced, force fed. Windows 7 may be old — and it is — but at least it is perhaps the last OS (not to mention Windows 8.1) that can still be ran free of OS AI. As for the browsers, search engines, avoiding Chrome and Edge is a prerequisite for anyone tied to freedom.
NO Google here, NO GAFAM to the maximum extent of feasibility.
I stopped using Google years ago. In their beginning Google used to be a good search engine. Over the years I have used lots of google scrapers, but Google ends up finding a way to block them or shut them down. I found SearX and now use it exclusively, it is a great search engine.
I see an image of an andoird phone but I do not know what this “Search-button” you are talking about is or these “three other buttons”.
Totally disagree–AI is here to stay, and I find CoPilot and Gemini and Mistral some of the most significant time savers technology has produced in decades.
[I’ll add here that DDG AI is by far the worst AI engine I’ve worked with; I don’t even bother using it anymore–the amount of work it takes to receive a valid response is far too time consuming.]
Now, the bloggers–they will go extinct; it’s a simple matter of evolution. The bloggers who learn how to write and provide information as well as AI does will survive; but far too often the writing style is mired down in egotistical flamboyance and a pseudo-intelligence. AI will continue to flourish and find new sources for scraping–it must evolve as well.
I did come across and appreciate the following link that I had to use yesterday:
https://www.guidingtech.com/export-text-messages-from-android-to-pdf/
Notice the date–2024; I rarely see this type of tutorial anymore, but it’s well-done with excellent screenshots.
The ability to use AI in the workplace–a marketable skill [if one still has employment not taken by AI]!
Being for against AI is one thing, being for or against AI being enforced and mandatory is another.
Being forced means loss of freedom. Temptation is to forget you’re being obliged when you happen to like what you’re force fed with.
“Paradise? If I want to” is the basis of intellectual freedom. We tend to forget that when the jail is golden. Some prefer to be imprisoned in a palace rather than free in a hovel. It’s their choice but which leaves no space for rational arguments.
There is a trend to approach our environments in radical postures led by binary reasoning. “Maybe”, “depends”, “pros and cons?” appear to many as the hesitation of poor minds, over-zealous intellectuals… leftists would even say the conservatives: because, yes, the implications of radicalism concern every aspect of our lives, from being systematically for or against AI to being bored by a leader who preached thinking before acting.
“Just do it!”, as is, is ultimately idiot but an extraordinary incentive when nuanced with “after having analyzed the pros and cons as you consider them to be and asked yourself if each is valuable”. Hesitating by laziness cannot be an argument to refuse or postpone, hesitating because you know “just doing it” may harm.
As always, we need to think, to practice introspection, honestly, avoiding the extremes of culpability and freedom as guides of our decisions.
Back to AI: why not consider, as with paradise: “If I want to”?.