Google Tells Court 'Open Web is Already in Rapid Decline' After Execs Claimed It Was Thriving (seroundtable.com) 21
Google has stated in a court filing that "the open web is already in rapid decline," contradicting recent public statements from executives including its CEO Sundar Pichai and Search VP Nick Fox, who maintained in May that web publishing and the web were thriving.
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.
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.
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.
Shareholder fodder (Score:2)
Google stated in court that the web is in rapid decline.
Any shareholder in the next quarterly meeting which hears good things about web advertising can follow up with a "Are the number of web sites viable for advertising increasing, decreasing or about the same?"
LLM / AI training data (Score:2)
If the web is in rapid decline, then will the knock-on effect be that the AI / LLM companies won't be able to have a sustainable amount of new AI training data?
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they can train each other. should be fine, right?
Even the bugs have moved on by now. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Even the bugs have moved on by now. (Score:2)
Apple tried the civil equivalent of that and it blew up in their faces. Club fed should probably hire epic's legal team to do the prosecution's job here
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.
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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.
Re: Contempt or SEC violation? (Score:2)
They're under no such obligation to the general public, only to their stakeholders, and only to the extent that it is legally relevant to each. However, and this is the important part that you're all too familiar with, without being mindful of: Anything they do or say may be used against them in a court of law.
Yeah but we don't really enforce laws anymore (Score:3)
Fairly simple, ask one or more questions (Score:2)
of the executives at the next shareholder conference call?
Same for LLM / AI companies such as "How much more new AI training data have you harvested and used in the last 3 months?"
Deja vu: deny, defend, depose (Score:2)
They'll say it... (Score:2)
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:3)
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: What killed the web? (Score:2)
alt right nazi garbage
What literally broke the internet was all the unpopular fuckwits finding each other online and ruining everything for the rest of us.
Your unpopular bullshit would get you punched in the face at a town hall meeting, in a real, local community, so your only "friends" are online. That's all you've got, you're unpopular in real life, and unpopular online. That's your last refuge, so of course you hate the "popular" internet because it's all you can see from the shitty little bubble you put yourself in. Like a s
What does that even mean? (Score:2)
Sure, some parts of the web are in clear decline, like maybe Google search results and certainly the Google advertising network. On the other hand, some parts of the web are thriving. Wikipedia is still awesome, for example. Also, smaller niche sites are quite rich. I do a lot of genealogy research, for example, and find the web bursting with useful information.