This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss Google's excuses for its terrible AI product, clicking aimlessly around the internet, and encrypted criminal communications.
JASON: Last night, Liz Reid, Google’s Head of Search, published a blog post explaining what went wrong with the company’s AI Overviews. We have been writing and podcasting about this topic endlessly because it is a fundamental change in how people use the internet that is going to make finding actual websites a lot harder, and is designed to keep people on Google’s platform longer. We have not built 404 Media to rely on Google traffic precisely because we don’t want to be crushable by any single company or algorithm tweak. But like all websites we would like people to be able to find our work if they search for something relevant. There is also an endless number of smaller sites that have been leveled by the constant small and large tweaks Google makes to its search algorithm, so I continue to believe it’s an important topic.
Reid’s blog post is damage control. Like all of Google’s communications about this clusterfuck, it is also very, very bad. It blames users and the media for using Google in the wrong ways. It is also full of huge claims that are not backed up with any information. This is what large companies do when they have messed up, but I want to talk about this post for a minute because I think it’s really wild.