Google has plunged the internet into a “spiral of decline”, the co-founder of the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) lab has claimed.
Mustafa Suleyman, the British entrepreneur who co-founded DeepMind, said: “The business model that Google had broke the internet.”
He said search results had become plagued with “clickbait” to keep people “addicted and absorbed on the page as long as possible”.
Information online is “buried at the bottom of a lot of verbiage and guff”, Mr Suleyman argued, so websites can “sell more adverts”, fuelled by Google’s technology.
Yeah…not so simple.
Our system based on infinite growth for the investors is what fucks everything up. The incessant need for MORE places pressure on companies to fuck someone over for money once the initial innovative growth stage ends and the market gets saturated. They buy or crush what competitors they can to squeeze the market. Usually the employees get it first with hiring cheaper labor, reduction in fringe and real benefits, rising costs for existing benefits, etc. Then the consumer gets hit next with enshittification. Shittier services, harder to access services, unbundling, more fees, shittier products, etc. often compounded with more in-your-face marketing.
Hmmm, someone could write a book about this!
And call it “The Money” or something.
Someone wrote a book about this.
You could make a religion out of this!
Another good examples of this I feel is how netflix is doing (and disney+ now as well). Year over year profits for shareholders have ruined what used to be good (or at least descent) businesses.
I figure it’s like cable companies. They get you hooked with a low price that puts the squeeze on competitors, then slowly jack up the fees on existing customers. It’s a safe bet when peer companies are also raising prices because where can the customers jump ship to that isn’t the exact same enshittified service? Plus, if there’s a series they’ve got you hooked on, are you going to want to leave or just rationalize that nobody else is better?
IMO we’re going to see more “subscribe for [extended time period]” and save $2/mo or maybe even timed contracts with abusive cancellation fees to keep customers on the hook.
The modern stock market sucks ass. I’m convinced that most of the problems with companies is tied to focusing on stock price.