Just me coming to terms with what Google's I/O announcements mean for the Internet
On the surface, Google's IO announcements seem like a promising development for technology. In reality, it's going to create a tedious slop of nothing, harder to escape than quicksand.
Google I/O kicked off overnight.
I didn't get up; I've found it hard to get excited by product announcements for a company whose monopolistic tendencies almost wiped out BTTR last year.
Last night's announcements have left me feeling worse about things. As you might expect, Google is shoehorning AI into every single thing it does, and while some ideas seem to be objectively good for consumers, most are primarily designed to lock people into Google.
Not that there's anything wrong with creating a compelling product that people want to use! The problem with Google is that it is building its empire on the decaying corpses of smaller businesses, publications and platforms. It is using its enormous size and wealth to literally steal the work these smaller businesses have produced in order to keep themselves as the gatekeeper of the Internet.
It's depressing. I had a long list of things I wanted to do today, but instead, I'm writing about this. When I've hit published, I'm going to take the rest of the day and think long and hard about the future.
Google's IO announcements
AI mode for search
The writing has been on the wall about this for over 12 months now, but now it's here. Google is rolling out AI mode for Google search in the US this week. There's no real indication of when it will come to Australia yet, but it's arrival is inevitable.
