Does Google know how Google works?
Platforms vs. LLMs. PLUS: "All Eyes on Rafah"
Greetings from Read Max HQ! In today’s newsletter: The Google “AI Overview” fiasco, why it was so funny/depressing, and what it tells us about Google A theory about the “All Eyes on Rafah” A.I.-generated Instagram image and why it (and not others) went viral
Deborah Carver
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May 31
"What it suggests is that Google’s problem here is not so much a misunderstanding of what LLMs are good at and what they’re for, but--more troublingly--a misunderstanding of what Google is good at and what it’s for."
Yes, yes, and yes. I've been working with web analytics and SEO for a long time, and while most people click on the top answer on the page without thinking about it because we have trained them Google is always right, many others prefer the list of links. Thank you for articulating the "I prefer a list of links" point of view because most people in search, publishing, and marketing think that if you're not at position 1, all is lost forever. But the data says plenty of people click on the archival links, and often.
It also seems that Pichai/Raghavan's vision of Google is starkly different from Page/Brin's vision, in that they are executives looking to make more money, versus idealistic grad students trying to change the world with the product they built. Not that Page and Brin aren't profit-motivated dopes, but with the company's most recent responses insisting that audiences are wrong in pointing out AI-overview errors, I don't think Pichai is fully on board with Don't Be Evil.
That's what struck me from Zitron's piece a couple of weeks ago: why was Raghavan panicked about getting more clicks in 2019? Google consistently has an 80-90% global market share. Does any other company have an 80% global market share of anything? (that is an honest question) But they are trying to get more money-making clicks because their research product doesn't make enough money somehow.
I don't know Google is making significant edits to their existing wildly popular and profitable research product except to seem cool and relevant for all the SV investors and colleagues who went gaga over ChatGPT. And there are likely business reasons that I don't understand. Because the tech industry is obsessed with going up and to the right forever and monetizing every incremental opportunity instead of building stable products for smart audiences.
Jeff
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May 31
One thing worth calling out regarding Google's AI answers is how it represents a massive shift in their business strategy.
As a platform, Google connected people who wanted stuff from the internet (answers, whatever) with people who had that stuff, and they skimmed a bit off the top via sponsored results.
Implicit in AI answers is a desire to keep people on Google itself. They no longer want their users to click through to that link to Reddit, or whatever. They have a bunch of users, and they want to keep them there. In that sense they're now behaving much more like a social media company: Facebook, Twitter, etc, which of course are notoriously hostile to external links. But if the underlying ethos becomes keeping users on google.com, then the value of sponsored results would seem to diminish in value. Why would I the advertiser pay for a link that you are actively trying to keep people from following?
