The Alphabet share price took a spanking yesterday down over 4% after their PR disaster with Gemini basically revealing the entire toxic DEI policy at Google in graphical form. It seems that Gemini added extra info to every prompt to make sure it conformed to their DEI policies. That's the policy that ensures diversity, equity and inclusivity as long as you are not white - or Jewish it seems these days.
This article seems to cover most of the bases. Anyway, that aside I think for me there are two things that come to mind here.
Firstly, I sense fear. Google know that without adwords they are finished. None of their other businesses make any real money. Without the search cash cow they are in the ditch.
Let me just explain how I use AI and ChatGpt and already use Google less. I search for the answers to questions I want and the AI filters the dross for me and gives me the answer right away. I don't have to scroll through endless pages of advertising and Search Engine Optimization text filler, I just get what I want now. I'm busy and spoiled, you are busy and spoiled, we are all busy and spoiled and we want everything right now like Veruca Salt.
Think about when you search for a recipe for example. You get several hundred websites. The first page above the fold is full of adverts which you scroll past and the second page is full of sites with highly optimized SEO, so clicking into them reveals several more pages of filler telling you about the history of the recipe and the experience of the chef cooking it before it actually reveals the list of ingredients and how to cook it. That format has to happen if the site wants to find itself listed anywhere near the top of the SERPS.
So obviously, as the AIs get more advanced, more personalized to you, they are going to give you more accurate and personalized search results than Google can.
The search game is changing and Google's model looks like it is going to become obsolete. They know this and that is why they are spending so much money on Gemini and AI.
However, despite all their power and money, all the skilled developers they have working for them, all their experience of search and the companies they own like Deep Mind that has been a pioneer in AI for over a decade, it seems they have a panic on. Which is why they have rushed out a sloppy version of their AI. So, why do they have a panic on?
Well, perhaps they are just a little nervous that they were twiddling their thumbs while Microsoft came and ate their lunch for them by buying Open AI and securing a first mover advantage.
But, I think its something else, something fundamental. They can see much further ahead than us. They have more insight into search and how they have maintained their dominance for the last two decades and I think that they think they can't win this.
Secondly, I think there probably couldn't be a worse time to look like a bad actor. I have never trusted Google anyway. I have some skin in the game here as I have been doing SEO for over 25 years and I have lost two businesses because of Google's ability to control the search market without any recourse.
They don't make radical changes as often as they did in the 2010s but back then you could wake up in the morning to find all your sites de-indexed and your business in ruins with no-one to speak to about it whatsoever. So, I have always been very uncomfortable with their monopoly in search but on the flip side it does make it easy just to optimize for one engine and not several. All your eggs in one basket as it were.
And I take umbrage in them getting involved in everything, buying up competitors but quite often making a lousy job of it. Take Google reviews. Any clown can put up a one star review with no text or review whatsoever for any business for no reason and there is nothing you can do to remove it.
Similarly, they don't enforce their own review guidelines and most of the time will ignore any emails or messages you send for help or just fire off an automated response. They just couldn't care less. And yet they rely on all of us to provide content for them because they don't actually make anything at all. So, they have been abusing their users and clients for years as far as I am concerned and I will not be sorry to see them get toppled.
So, in a nutshell they don't care about their users and they never have.
Now, combine this with the threat that with the advancements in AI, it seems at this point we will never really be able to trust anything online again. Videos can be manipulated or completely made from nothing. Already it is hard to tell if they are real and soon to the human eye it will be impossible. Articles, news, photos, social media posts, social media influencers, legacy media, it can all be influenced, bought or just made up. We won't know what to believe.
But we have just had some real insight and a demonstration on how we can be manipulated with the AIs and why people might seek to do that to further their own ideologies.
From now on we will all be looking for the truth, in fact we are already starting to do so. Not a version of it, not someone's opinion of it, not a view on it, not a lived experience of it - the objective truth or as close as we can get.
At this point we don't know who the good players are, who are the truth tellers and who we can rely on.
But we do know one thing already. We know that Google is not one of them.
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