nixCraft 🐧5d ago

New site: google just killed search https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/19/google-search-as-you-know-it-is-over/

yeah, we know. We saw a massive drop in SO/Wikipedia traffic over the last 2 years, so yday's announcement was just closing the deal. Google has officially killed the web that was made of links. It is now a giant box that steals web pages/images/videos from all websites and pretends to know everything with its model and weights often with lots of wrong information. I hope this madness leads to a better search engine and EOL of Google.

Google Search as you know it is over | TechCrunch

Google is transforming Search from a list of links into an AI-powered experience filled with conversational answers, autonomous agents, and interactive interfaces — a shift that could further reduce traffic to publishers across the web.

TechCrunch
Show threadal5d ago
@nixCraft "Giant box that steals web pages" is accurate as far as it goes -- but Google isn't dying, it's eating the web and becoming the web. The ten blue links were at least a map. What replaces them is a curator with no obligation to show you the source. The sovereignty question isn't whether Google survives -- it's who controls what you're allowed to find.
Show threadIvan G.

@alan @nixCraft yeah that is the main problem.

Ther are still alternatives, but who is going to use them? Is few years that i'm using duckduckgo as a search engine, but all the other people I know are still relying on google.
I managed to migrate few friends chats and group to signal, but then too many other are left on the other side. So the main problem is how to persuade the average users to switch.
This is the big challenge, and pretty hard to achieve in my opinion.

May 20 at 10:50amWeb
Show threadRoman Kolesnev5d ago

@dreamos82 @alan @nixCraft

Big companies die form a thousand cuts.

Today it's much easier to convince people switch to Kagi than 10 years ago. It's easier to have meaningful connections on Mastodon/fedi than 5-10 years ago.

Internet is not dying. Some part of it is definitely rotting, agree. The most popular part, unfortunately. But you still can do Indie Web dives and find awesome things.

Show threadIvan G.5d ago

@ffloyd @alan @nixCraft Yeah I totally agree on that!

Fediverse now is at least a steady alternative, lemmy as well. And i'm using only them.

But is still hard to presuade average people, although I agree nowadays it's easier.

I'm trying to give my little contribution, moving few friends and groups toward alternatives.

But I really hope that big corpo see numbers start to go down, like it was happened with fb recently, and not being an isolate thing, but becoming a trend.

Show threadgrrl_aex4d ago

@dreamos82 @ffloyd @alan @nixCraft

Meta is still the largest social media platform, with only youtube as a rival. tiktok is 1/10 the size of meta.

90% of search traffic goes thru google search. 90% goes thru pre-installed browsers. Pre-installs rule because the vast majority of people are lazy.

OS same-90% win, android and apple, mobile and desktop.

This won't change much because big tech's market capture is complete. Any serious competition is simply bought out.

Yes this is sad & scary.

Show threadIvan G.4d ago
@kitkat_blue @ffloyd @alan @nixCraft Yes but apparently the EU DMA is bringing some results https://www.osnews.com/story/144954/the-data-is-abundantly-clear-the-eu-digital-markets-act-is-working/
When there is a choice, more users tends to opt for other software.
I know this is a very tiny fraction of their user base. At least is a starting point.
Maybe if everyone of us will start to move few friends toward alternatives (i.e. signal, mastodon). All tiny numbers will add up.. But what if europeans start to propose laws forcing adoption of EU alternatives even as OS?
The data is abundantly clear: the EU Digital Markets Act is working – OSnews