Google is the tech company the most hostile to democracy. No one else has done more to defund the media. They tend to still get a vague pass in technical circles because most computer geeks have a poor understanding of the web's economics — where the search/browsers deal defunds the entire ecosystem — and an even poorer understanding of politics and how information works in society. But they will treat any independent source of information as a bug that needs eliminating. Organising the world's information was always an authoritarian project and it's really coming into its own. Most of the news industry is terrified and traumatised. We need more people to speak up like Mike below, the industry needs to be a lot less submissive and a lot more strategic, and policymakers need to see through the bullshit and act accordingly.
The photo below was taken at Google HQ. I was told my 24 years of experience mattered. I was told Google wanted to 'fix' the search ecosystem. 17 MONTHS later, they’ve ghosted us and our traffic is being cannibalized by their AI. The 'conversation' was a lie. Google invited me to HQ to help "fix" search. It was a pacification tactic. I’ve been publishing Mountain Weekly News for 24 years. I’ve spent two decades technically vetting gear in the trenches of the Tetons while Google was still in its infancy. I walk the walk, I test the gear, and I’ve survived every algorithm shift—until now. October 2024, Google invited me and 19 other independent creators (including Rutledge Daugette of TechRaptor) to their HQ for a "Web Creator Conversation." They told us they wanted to hear from the experts. They told us search was changing and they needed our help to get it right. It was a masterclass in smoke and mirrors. Danny Sullivan (who won't allow me to tag him...) and the search team asked us to stop "pining" them publicly on X and LinkedIn. Instead, they asked us to compile "internal documents" with our findings, data, and technical concerns. They promised these would be the "workbooks" for the engineering team. Rutledge sent 26 pages of exhaustive data. I sent an 8-page deep dive on how Google was rewarding corporate conglomerates over actual experts. The result? Silence. Ghosting. Total lack of accountability. Did anyone on your team see this Cathy Edwards? We weren't invited there to provide solutions; we were invited there to be silenced. It was a pacification tactic to shut us up while they finished building a parasitic search engine that values Reddit threads and AI-generated "slop" over two decades of primary-source expertise. The "Don't Be Evil" era is dead. Why did that get removed Jennifer Kutz Google has a responsibility to the ecosystem that feeds it. Instead, they’ve chosen a path that rewards media conglomerates that pay writers pennies to "spin" content, while independent publishers who actually invest in original photography and technical vetting are forced into layoffs and closure. If Google continues to prioritize "Zero-Click" results and corporate authority over human expertise, there will be no professional independent media left to crawl in two years. Any thoughts Pandu Nayak? Should I close a 24 year old business? Rutledge and I aren't giving up. We’ve found business models that don't rely on a broken search engine. But the open web is on life support, and the "physician" is the one pulling the plug. Check the data for yourself: any thoughts? Cyrus S. Barry Schwartz Lily Ray Glenn Gabe My report: https://lnkd.in/g4xCgg8Q 26 Page Report: https://lnkd.in/gbwPXVk4 #GoogleSearch #SEO #HCU #DigitalMarketing #IndependentPublishing #TechRaptor #MountainWeeklyNews #SearchEngineLand #GoogleHQ #AIO #ZeroClick
Silicon Valley has an internal narrative, according to which we are poor misguided people who don’t get it, but it’s okay, they’ll save us from ourselves with the bright tech future they have in mind for us. They’re immune to your points, because they have constructed a worldview and value system where they are the heroes, the vanguard, the pioneers, and the rest of the world is an old folks’ home. They think that they think of us fondly, but they never visit.
If it's deliberately broken, don't fix it. Weird to see experts with such a naive approach. FuckOffGoogle was in 2018… Better late than never, but at some point it's almost complicity.
I was also naïve, until the 2019 EU elections. In 2018, I was a member of the EU's High Level Expert Group on disinformation. GAFAMs played difficult, but we managed to get their commiments on coregulation, trust indicators etc etc. Except every yearly assessment report reported modest progress, despite EU Commission trying to be (excessively) constructive. Same thing with Google DNI, then Google News Initiative: indeed, self-interested 'trainings', or pacification initiatives - both effective. Now, naïvity and trust has gone. But regulation is not enough: lets build TEPs, our own Trusted European Platforms.
Is Substack a reasonable alternative?
Robin Berjon Mike Hardaker Reading this, it’s clear how hard it is when platforms don’t align incentives with expertise. I admire that you’re exploring business models that don’t rely on a single gatekeeper. That’s exactly the kind of systemic thinking the web needs to sustain independent voices while platforms evolve. It also reinforces a bigger point: the ecosystem itself needs mechanisms that protect expertise and provenance, so creators aren’t at the mercy of one dominant player.
Natalia Antelava and Coda Media, Inc as done some excellent framing of Google and what it has done to media, including Antelava's famous interview with Gingras. https://www.codastory.com/authoritarian-tech/the-werewolf-game-an-interview-with-googles-former-news-chief-richard-gingras/
The handwriting was on the wall the day Google restructured and created its parent company Alphabet in 2015, "Don't be evil" was largely phased out as a guiding principle.
Google has such a high power of manipulation, they don’t care about democracy, all that matters is business. I posted yesterday about my experience with Gemini and ChatGPT asking advice in selling a property. So many have already become addicted to LLMs in all life ma tiers. Gemini us amassing at pushing to promote businesses they will monetise at best. And people will just follow. Sometimes it will concern business decision makings, sometimes emotional matters. Soon, it will be we the robots, following advices orders. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/taubmanbassirian_what-could-happen-when-users-become-addicted-share-7444697180080074752-uCWR?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&rcm=ACoAAAEjZSMBPHCDNL0ZfbkbHBFk7NBEwjLsbi0
A bit of a weird concept to believe that media orgs deserve that revenue just because they once had it. Search ads and infinite feeds are just a far better medium for advertising. It's Internet, not Google, which killed the previous model, erasing the barries for outlets like the NYT to capture entire market.