Conversations with creators and thinkers who are charting the way forward in a tech-saturated society. In our shift to a digital future, we need alternatives to Big Tech. Homepage: techtonic.fm

Also available as an MP3 podcast. More info at our Podcast Central page.

May 20, 2024: What's eating Google?

Listen to this show: MP3 - 128K |  Pop-up player!

Today: What’s eating Google?

Google abandoned its slogan “Don’t be evil” years ago. But things have gotten even worse as the company announced bizarre new AI features, and even more surveillance, at its recent developer event. All of which raises the question: What’s eating Google?

• From Jason Kint (May 5, 2024):

• Google Tries to Pay Off the Antitrust Division (by Matt Stoller, May 20, 2024):

There are actually two antitrust cases against Google, and the one that just ended, which is about search, is in front of a judge, while the one going to trial in September, which is about advertising software, is in front of a jury. . . . In this case, the Antitrust Division alleged that Google had robbed advertisers through monopolization . . . Google’s response last week was astonishing. They just cut a check for all proposed harms, tripled it in accordance with the Sherman Act’s treble damages charge, and claimed that the point is moot. But beyond that, the search monopolist argued that the United States government “has no right to a jury trial . . .”

• YouTube Says It Will Block Protest Song in Hong Kong: gift link to WSJ story by Austin Ramzy (May 15, 2024):

YouTube said that it would comply with a Hong Kong court ruling that banned the distribution of a protest song in the city . . . [YouTube said] that it would block videos of the song “Glory to Hong Kong” and links to such videos would no longer appear on YouTube when viewed in the city.

“Glory to Hong Kong” was a popular anthem during the protest movement that began in 2019, when millions took to the streets to oppose extraditions to mainland China. The movement grew into broader calls for democratic rights but was crushed by authorities wielding a sweeping security law imposed on the city by Beijing in 2020.

(In other words, whatever the CCP says is what Hong Kong citizens are forced to live with. Keep that in mind with the next story . . .)

• Google unleashes AI in search, raising hopes for better results and fears about less web traffic (by Michael Liedtke, AP News, May 15, 2024): “Google on Tuesday [May 14] rolled out a retooled search engine that will frequently favor responses crafted by artificial intelligence over website links, a shift promising to quicken the quest for information while also potentially disrupting the flow of money-making internet traffic.”

(Let’s listen to Google I/O conference mentions of AI (May 14, 2024).)

• Alex Brown, on Bluesky (May 16, 2024) writes: “If you’re not in education, you have no idea how many schools are embedded in the Google ecosystem. Not just chromebooks but our email, cloud servers, even SSO. We’re stuck with whatever Google wants to do.”

(Above: sounds like Hong Kong citizens dealing with the CCP.)

• Revolutionary New Google Feature Hidden Under 'More' Tab Shows Links to Web Pages (by Samantha Cole, 404 Media, May 15, 2024): “At its annual I/O conference on Tuesday, Google announced that it’s doubling down on these AI-generated results that users hate, with ‘AI Overviews,’ an AI-generated summary at the top of search results. . . . I tried searching ‘what are some foods that end in um’ and Google’s AI Overview returned a long list of three-letter foods, which is not at all what I asked for.” (Results included “ahi,” “cos,” “eel,” “gac,” “haw,” “ale,” and “cow.” No word on whether “applum, bananum, strawberrum, tomatum, and coconut” was an actual response, but either way it’s certainly not fixed.) Apparently Google will offer a “Web filter” available that cuts out all the AI nonsense.

• Also from 404 Media, from past Techtonic guest Jason Koebler, Is Google's AI Actually Discovering 'Millions of New Materials?' (April 11, 2024): “In November, Google’s AI outfit DeepMind published a press release titled ‘Millions of new materials discovered with deep learning.’ But now, researchers who have analyzed a subset of what DeepMind discovered say ‘we have yet to find any strikingly novel compounds’ in that subset.”

• Even if you think AI search could be good, it won’t be good (Cory Doctorow, May 15, 2024): “there are plenty of obvious objections to [Google’s AI-driven search results]. For starters, why wouldn’t Google just make its search results better? Rather than building a LLM for the sole purpose of sorting through the garbage Google is either paid or tricked into serving up, why not just stop serving up garbage? . . . Google's 90% search market share was attained by bribing everyone who operates a service or platform where you might encounter a search box to connect that box to Google. Spending tens of billions of dollars every year to make sure no one ever encounters a non-Google search is a cheaper way to retain your business than making sure Google is the very best search engine.”

• Google I/O recap (Business Insider, May 14, 2024): “In the [Project Astra AI agent] demo, a Google employee walks around the DeepMind office in London, which Project Astra recognizes, and asks Gemini if it remembers where she left her glasses. Project Astra replied that she’d left them next to an apple on her desk in the office. She walks over there and, lo and behold, there are her glasses by the apple on her desk. The AI agent ‘remembered’ the glasses in the background of previous frames from the phone’s live video feed.” (Much like Sam Altman said, as we discussed last week: AI agents want to surveil everything.)

In other dystopian news

• An A.I. Robot Named Sophia Tells Graduates to Believe in Themselves (gift link to NYT article, May 15, 2024): “For its spring commencement on Saturday, D’Youville University, a private institution in Buffalo, had an A.I. robot named Sophia address a crowd of more than 2,000 students, faculty members and their families . . .”



. . . and a “Starlink precipitation report”:



• Sask. farmers baffled after discovering strange wreckage in field (CTV News, May 9, 2024): see below what came out of the sky.



Sign up to get Mark’s weekly email newsletter.

PAST EPISODES: techtonic.fm lists recent Techtonic shows.

PODCAST: If you use an open podcast player reader, here’s an RSS feed. If you have to use a Big Tech podcast app, here’s Techtonic on iTunes.