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Does Google Want the Web to Die? [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-06-17

Back in the before times, before ubiquitous high-speed internet, before data anywhere for your phones, there existed dial up modems. Creaky, cranky devices that took your phone line hostage and screamed at you for several moments before connecting to the provider — not the internet — and slowly, slowly allowing you access to a usually limited, controlled section of online information. Most did not allow access to the internet proper, at least not at first. They kept you in their bubble, allowing you access only to material they wanted you to see.

This was very profitable. By isolating you, by keeping you in their pen, they controlled access to you and thus access to ad dollars about you. Not only did you pay for the privilege of being in their box, others paid them the privilege of advertising to you, in their box. The largest of these firms, America Online, or AOL, grew so large so quickly that it bought Time Warner. Unfortunately, it bought Time Warner just as the internet proper was breaking through and people no longer wanted the box. Combined with home high speed internet, and the box model was doomed.

Or was it?

Google seems intent on bringing back the box model, and it is going to use imitative AI in the attempt. Google is all in on bringing its AI driven “answers” to search. Those answers are designed to be a one stop — people would have little reason to follow the provided links (assuming the links are even real) and leave Google. Companies are already seeing this effect. Traffic from Google to news firms, for example, is collapsing, with decreases as much as 50%. And we know that the head of Google search has ordered, in the past, less effective response so that people will have to search more, thus staying on Google longer. Obviously, this means more ad revenue for Google. And if it also means people are less likely to see things Google’s management would prefer they not see? Well, that’s not the driver, but who in the executive suite is going to complain?

In Google’s mind, people leaving the site is a “necessary evil”. If they could keep people from ever leaving a Google property, they certainly would. To them, the AOL model is the golden calf, the ultimate goal. Keeping people entirely under their information thumb means more control, more ways to make money off them, and more opportunity to become a monopoly. This, of course, is terrible for the rest of us.

The lack of advertising revenue will close many news and independent sites (think of review sites — who will go to them if the answer to “which toothbrush should I buy” pops up, accurate or not, on the Google search page?). Some may keep going through subscriptions and other revenue streams, but those are not likely to be local outlets, increasing the number of news deserts in the country. And the answers can be, and often are, wrong in ways that are subtle and hard to detect without expertise. And, of course, as there are fewer and fewer independent sources available to train models, the answers will get stale and less correct as time goes by. But why should Google care? They have you locked into their ecosystem regardless.

Maybe I am wrong. I certainly don’t think that imitative AI will ever justify its costs, but this might be one way in which it comes close. And maybe google will come to believe that its best interests lie in keeping information sources alive. But it feels more and more like using Google is just like using AOL. You may not hear the beeps and screams of a modem, and you may not see it swallow your telephone line whole, cutting you off from communication it does not approve, but you will end up in the same box.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/6/17/2328337/-Does-Google-Want-the-Web-to-Die?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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