Google Tells Court 'Open Web is Already in Rapid Decline' After Execs Claimed It Was Thriving (seroundtable.com)
- Reference: 0179089780
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/09/08/188234/google-tells-court-open-web-is-already-in-rapid-decline-after-execs-claimed-it-was-thriving
- Source link: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-open-web-is-in-rapid-decline-40068.html
The admission appeared in Google's response to a divestiture proposal, arguing that breaking up the company would accelerate the decline and harm publishers dependent on open-web display advertising revenue. Google's VP of Global Ads Dan Taylor has since clarified the company was referring specifically to open-web display advertising, not the entire open web.
[1] https://www.seroundtable.com/google-open-web-is-in-rapid-decline-40068.html
Even the bugs have moved on by now. (Score:5, Insightful)
Google' strategy here was and is to obstruct the investigation into who killed the Internet until the corpse is too decayed to tell exactly how it came to be deceased.
Contempt or SEC violation? (Score:2)
Google is guilty of contempt of court, violation of SEC rules for lying about the state of the internet, or both.
Re: (Score:2)
It's really an opinion question, is AI going to dramatically alter the web or not? No one knows the answer to that. All that we do know is that AI is disrupting a lot of things and the web may end up being one of them. So depending on how you feel about AI that day, your answer can differ.
Re:Contempt or SEC violation? (Score:4)
> It's really an opinion question,
Yes, and google is obligated to decide what its opinion is when its executives make public statements, or when their lawyers do court filings, and they need to match.
Re: (Score:2)
I am sure Google can weasel out of that. Maybe the open web IS thriving, as they said before, but it is thriving less than it was before, meaning that it is in decline, as they said more recently.
Or maybe it is thriving in a different sense, from a different perspective, from the one in which it is declining.
Or maybe these two statements actually don't need to match, because you are using logic whereas those statements were made in the domain of law.
Yeah but we don't really enforce laws anymore (Score:2)
At the moment the doj is basically an arm of the heritage foundation and project 2025. The only reason Google is getting all this heat is because the heads of the administration want Google to bend the knee and promote their content over everyone else's even though in the actual quote unquote marketplace of ideas right-wing content is very unpopular. Take away the constant backing and the tons of money from billionaires pushing it and stuff like Fox News goes away... And the right wing influencer is on YouT
Deja vu: deny, defend, depose (Score:2)
Getting a real sense of deja vu here. Google can't keep straight which side of it's mouth it is talking out of: deny, defend, depose.
They'll say it... (Score:2)
whatever way that benefits them.
Life imitates Futurama (Score:3)
I can't find a clip anywhere, but this immediately reminded me of the shareholders meeting in Futurama's episode "Future Stock". The meeting opens with a snazzy, upbeat promo film extolling the company's accomplishments and overall greatness, wrapping up with the line "Planet Express - the unstoppable juggernaut of the corporate universe!" Then Hermes steps to the mic...
"It's been a terrible year, people. The company is on the verge of bankruptcy!"
What killed the web? (Score:2)
Centralization via mass appeal. PageRank is the ultimate weapon of its demise: whatever is popular, gets more popular, so social media and Wikipedia take over and independent creators are dis-incentivized to produce anything valuable. As a result, you get slop and now you get AI slop. "Enshittification" (a word for children) is what happens when the popular audience shapes tastes.
Re: (Score:2)
You were so close. Who is going to put them in the grinder? The federal government?
Real freedom only exists without an oppressive situation. Governments can be that, but they are also a tool for expressing the will of the people on anything that can oppress freedom.