Media Says Google Hates You.

Añadido: 2026-05-31

[00:00:03]Google hates you. According to sfgate.com, Google absolutely hates you. And I read through this article. Geeky sent it over. And I actually do agree with the author on several points here. We're going to talk about how Google hates you. According to the author, the reason that Google hates you is that they have changed their search. uh after decades of relying on Google to find what you want, Google's AI is now going to tell you what you want, it's going to scrape content from other people's websites and hopefully hopefully it's the right answer that you're looking for on the AI snippet, the AI overview. But a lot of people are very unhappy with Google, especially people who are anti- AI because the entire site is AI now. It's all AI and so is YouTube to be honest.

[00:00:47]If you're watching us on YouTube, hey, there's AI on the back end determining whether or not you're going to see this video. Uh, everything is being run through AI on Google's end, on Microsoft's end, all these big tech companies, Facebook, you know, I don't know what the solution is if you don't like it. I mean, I don't like it. I don't like the fact that Google is forcing people to take their word for it with search. They're not letting people really go out and do their own due diligence and and find what they're looking for. They're spoon feeding it to you because they probably have a a deal, an advertising deal, publishing deal with a lot of these websites. And the ones they don't, they're just taking the content anyway.

[00:01:30]You know, CNN, I guess they're getting into it with Perplexity AI, they said that perp uh Perplexity has taken like millions of their articles and uh doing summaries there. But we're going to talk about this and we're going to talk about how it is going to absolutely lead to the decimation of the digital news space including NPR.

[00:01:49]They just had to cut more staff today.

[00:01:52]Uh their traffic is getting cut off.

[00:01:54]Their their uh money from the government, the USA ID money got cut off. But I think we're going to see this across the board. And I don't think it's just going to be the outlets you don't like. It doesn't matter what the politics of the outlet are. Google is going to make it harder to find alternative voices. We've talked about this before and I don't think it is going to fully sink in just how bad this is until we're 6 10 18 months down the road and you're basically being spoonfed content from Google that may or may not be correct, may or may not be fact checked and is probably going to come from like three or four different sources. It's going to come from the, you know, the ABCs and the NBC's and of course Reddit, which blows my mind because Reddit is user generated content and Reddit's full of [ __ ] but you know, whatever. So, let's talk about all this.

[00:02:48]Before we get into it any further, please subscribe for more pop culture news, views, and rants. Guys, this is Neon. This is Clownfish TV. And if you're looking for more Clownfish TV, go out to m.clownfishtv.com clownfishtv.com where we have more podcast episodes out there that you can access for less than the cost of a single super chat. We do not do super chats over here. So, if you want to support us, that is the way to do it. Uh, also, if you want to listen to the audio version of Clownfish TV, take us with you, please. Uh, you can go out to iTunes or Spotify. So, thank you very much for that. So, this article is um interesting. It is making the rounds ironically on Reddit, but uh Kiki sent it over. Google hates you. So SFGate columnist Drew McGari Mcgari weighs in on the dire consequences of Google's AI pivot. And again, I do agree with a lot of his points here. And uh we talked about it the other day that this this shift, this change um you know, going all in on on AI overviews is going to really take a crowbar to the internet. I mean, we we have relied so heavily on Google, and I think people are starting to think like, hey, maybe we should have another search engine. Maybe we shouldn't go all in on on Google tools. Maybe we shouldn't rely so heavily on YouTube. He said, "If you want people to read your work, if you're a digital journalist, and I do, you must pay tribute to the SEO gods if you want that writing to be easily discovered." Yes, it's a pain in the ass. people were like, and this is me editorializing here, um, we've run websites since 2007, 2008, and uh, they were pretty consistent until Google snapped its its gauntlet covered fingers and and destroyed the internet. Uh, we just saw it decline in real time over the last two years. But, uh, yeah, you know, articles had to be written a certain way to get the attention of the search engine gods and basically Google.

[00:04:45]And, and now it doesn't work. Uh, he said, "You must kneel before one SEO god in particular, Google." Yes, Google has ruled the search engine market for the entirety of this century, which is why every media outlet I've ever worked at, this one included, has dedicated nearly endless amounts of both personal and tech uh personnel and tech to make sure that when you, the reader, search for articles on why Meta's new sunglasses make you look like a complete tool, by God, that's exactly what you get. But while slaving away at perfecting their search engine optimization infrastructure, none of those outlets ever seriously ask themselves the question, what if there comes a day when the search engine stops or the search engine optimizes for itself and only itself? Yes. Uh what do they call it? Uh 0 point Google zero. When they stop sending any meaningful traffic to external websites that that day is here.

[00:05:36]Oh, he says it too. Yeah, that day has arrived. You and I know the quality of Google search results has been lacking for years, but last week the company announced plans to essentially kill off its search results entirely. Addressing all of your queries within Gemini instead, look at this horrible [ __ ] Look at it. Yes, pretty much. And it gets it wrong. Gemini, especially Gemini is not as good as even Grock or Chat GPT. It does get things wrong. Someone get me a cup of lie to soak my eyeballs in. Google was already attempting to steer users toward stolen content by autopop populating the top of every search with an artificial intelligence overview followed by sponsored links and sometimes a bunch of other unwanted crap. Yeah, if you wanted to find what you're actually looking for, you have to get past page one. And most people never get past page one. And that's kind of a golden rule of SEO is you have to be in the top three or at least above the fold, above the scroll if you want people to find your website. you had you couldn't be buried on page three because people weren't going to go past page one. And now they're not even going to go past these these overviews for the most part. He said, "If you want purely web-based search results from Google, you have to hunt around for the web filter in one of their sub menus." Yeah, they make it very hard to turn this off or you have to manually input code into your search so the AI demon isn't the first thing you see. And that's if you actually care about what you're searching for. Most people don't.

[00:06:57]They'll get a topline answer from AI and deem it not worth the trouble to click or scroll any further. Yes, including putting glue on your pizza or whatever dumb [ __ ] And and Reddit is notorious for misinformation and they're really weighing Reddit a lot more than they should. It's userenerated userenerated content. Uh any malicious actor can post any amount of [ __ ] on Reddit and Google's going to eat that up. This is why when Google's algorithm dep prioritized external links, it killed off traffic to all publishing sites, this one included, by about a quarter or more virtually overnight. Yes, this is what we've seen, too. And it it it's been rolled out in waves. Uh wave 1 was I think the end of 2023 or beginning of 2024. Uh I saw the warning signs. I was talking to other site owners and unfortunately I started laying people off from from a lot of our sites about the beginning the end of 2023 beginning of 2024 because I'm like it's not going to get better. It's not going to get better. This isn't just a bump in the road because sometimes you have that.

[00:08:00]Sometimes you have bad months. They're not great for whatever reason. Uh the traffic's not as good as it should be, but then you just kind of, you know, reorient yourself or hope that things pick back up and usually things would level out. That did not happen. Um, I still remember our last normal month and the drop off was severe. We went we dropped like 90% the following month.

[00:08:25]Like we had a normal month, things were going pretty okay and then we went we dropped like 90%. Then it rebounded a little bit, but it it never got back to the level it was at before for our traffic. It just it it just dissipated.

[00:08:39]Uh, and and social media, good luck with that. Social media depp prioritizes sending traffic to your website. They want you to publish on their platform.

[00:08:48]X, formerly Twitter, wants you to publish on their platform. They don't want you to send traffic to websites.

[00:08:54]Facebook wants you to publish mostly videos now on their platform. They don't want you to send traffic to external websites. In fact, they'll ask people if they're sure. If you go to to click to go to a, you know, follow a link and go to an external website, they're like, "You sure you want to do that? We don't know what's going to happen. It might be a bad site. You better stay on Facebook where all the ads are so we can monetize you better. That's what the endgame is for all of this. And Google's doing the same thing. Google has basically become a social media website at this point.

[00:09:24]They're social media now. They're not they're not a search engine. They're no more a search engine than Facebook or uh you know any other AI agent. That that's what they are. They're not about helping you find what you want. They're about pushing uh into your eyeballs what they want you to see. And it usually has some sort of monetary value for them attached to it. Might not be the most useful information, but it's maybe coming from one of their publishing partners or they're getting affiliate revenue from it or something. And this was always going to happen at some point. It just took the uh the right CEO to come in and say, "You know what? You know what? We have the world's attention and everybody goes through us. So, we're going to jack up the toll. That's you're going to go through us. This we are the internet [ __ ] They think they they really do think they're the internet. Uh Google and for a lot of people they are. But so is America Online.

[00:10:17]So is MySpace. I I just want to put that out there. You know it, you know, if you get too big for your britches and the public turns on you and public perception uh is soured on you, ask Microsoft how that's going for them.

[00:10:31]It's not going very well. I'm just saying sites like SFGAT need traffic to survive and writers like me need those sites to stay alive if we hope to remain gainfully employed by them. We're going to talk about NPR here in a second.

[00:10:42]Google, which is set as the default search engine in nearly every piece of tech you consume, is poised to cut off their oxygen supply altogether. So, if you've recently asked yourself, how can they kill journalism even derive? This is how. Yeah, this is it. This is it, man. And we've been calling it for at least two or three years now that it's it's over. And a lot of these websites are selling dirt cheap because they know it's over. This is why Google needs to be seized by the government and broken into a trillion little pieces. I don't know if the government's going to do that because remember, uh, Mr. Pitchy, Mr. Sunder Pitchy was standing right behind the orange one.

[00:11:19]during the uh event when the orange I don't even know what I can say on YouTube anymore because they screen all the videos now. He was standing behind the orange one at the big event where the orange one uh receives his his promotion again there cuz if you if you say it, they're like, "Oh, this is election stuff." I I swear to God, it's crazy. And they listen to everything you say on YouTube and they use AI to determine what they think your video is about.

[00:11:46]Um they said it's not just a me problem.

[00:11:48]You don't have to be a writer to have your livelihood be dependent on Google.

[00:11:51]Yeah. Uh see also YouTubers. See also anybody who has has put all their eggs into this basket. And it was a huge mistake. It was a massive mistake for us to do that. Small business owners need Google to reach potential new customers.

[00:12:03]Students, many of them working on schoolisssued Chromebooks made by Google need to need to research term papers and study for final exams. Well, that's okay. That's okay. Google Gemini will tell you that George Washington was a black woman. And uh you I'm sure you'll get an A on that exam, right? In its earliest form, google.com was the perfect utility for all these people, millions more. Uh we we'll talk a little bit. I don't want to take this whole article here. Uh you go out to sfgate.com and watch it, but a lot of people are jumping ship. Uh we talked about yesterday. They're going to duck.go.

[00:12:34]Uh duck.go installs are up 30%. We need more options. Uh they just shut down Jeeves. You need to bring it back. You need to resuscitate that [ __ ] Bring him back. We need him now more than ever. We need an alternative internet. I really think we do. And I'm not talking like, oh, it's the dark web where all the chuds hang out and sell your personal information and feet picks. No, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about an internet that fundamentally functions like the old internet that's AI optional and definitely the corporations stay the [ __ ] out of it. In my opinion, that's what we need. And we need to have search engines and web rings like we used to so people can actually find what they're looking for. And sometimes you stumble upon things by accident. One of the biggest problems I think with uh you know laser focused search is if you don't know what you want until you see it, you're not going to find wonderful new things, right? Remember Stumble Upon? That was pretty cool. You just hit the button and it would just show you like different websites, whatever. We I feel like we need something like that.

[00:13:37]Like yeah, Google has the I'm feeling lucky thing. I don't think it's luck. I think the dice are loaded. I think it's going to be whatever they want to show you. But I miss getting lost on the internet for hours and discovering wonderful new things and websites and uh you know, stories and um you know, that's kind of how I I found uh emulation. Oh my god, am I allowed to talk about that? Nintendo's coming. Uh but yeah, I kind of stumbled upon you know, emulation sites and I'm like, "Oh my god, you can play old games on your Macintosh. This is crazy." And I always, you know, uh, curated my bookmarks and, uh, you know, there's certain sites that were good for certain information. Other people had blogs, other people had art sites. I mean, before everything was, uh, had congealed into the gray goo that is the internet right now. And Google is the gray goo. Um, I think they need to take the color out of out of their logo because it's really it's pretty disgusting uh, how things are going. And I know they're better than this. I know there are people at the company that still feel that Google should not be evil, but remember guys, they took that slogan down a long time ago. And all of this is affecting anybody on the internet. It's affecting people um you know, on the YouTube level. It's affecting them on the search level. You know, it's it is what it is. But let's talk about this NPR. So, this is this is where it ends. And I know some people are going to be cheering on the end of NPR, but like I said, it doesn't matter what flavor of journalism it is. It doesn't matter what flavor of website it is. It doesn't even have to be a news site. You're not going to find what you're looking for. You're going to find what Google wants to show you. So, this is coming from a the rap. Uh NPR cuts 10 staffers, at least 18 others, except buyouts. The move comes as the company looks to cut costs following Congress Congress's vote to eliminate federal subsidies for public media last year. Um I think also I think also they're looking at the writing on the wall and they're looking at what's going on with search and they're like we're our traffic is not going to come back. It's not coming back. This whole advertising subsidized model of digital journalism is over.

[00:15:50]Right. NPR laid off 10 employees as it looks to save money following Congress Congress's vote to eliminate federal subsidies for public media last year.

[00:15:59]Layoffs represent about 4% of its content division which includes his newsroom and pod who wa newsroom and podcast.

[00:16:07]That surprises me. No staff members of news programs or podcasts were effect.

[00:16:12]Okay. Additionally, at least 18 new staffers have voluntarily accepted buyouts to depart the company with eight empty positions expected to be left unfulfilled.

[00:16:22]Today has been incredibly heavy, and I want to acknowledge how difficult it is to say goodbye to our colleagues, said the editor-inchief Thomas Evans. Um, the plan for layoffs and buyouts were first announced by Evan and NPR and CEO Katherine Maher last week. Now, Kathern Mar, is she the one who said that that said that uh she came from Wikipedia, I think, and she's the one who was like, "Oh, yeah, uh truth is subjective or sometimes, you know, people don't need the truth or what." I'm like, "Yeah, that's that really was that was kind of a kill shot for NPR." Like, people were already on the fence like, man, NPR got like really, really, really political lately. Like, they're definitely picking sides. And then she said that and people are like, "Yep, that's it. I'm never listening to NPR again. You're not getting my money. I don't care. I don't care if the NPR guy comes on, begs for money, you're not getting it. NPR directly relied on federal funds for only 1% of its budget. How come they're laying so many people off if that were the case? The pair noted the company was looking to save 8 million and expected a drop of 15 million in member station fees.

[00:17:24]Um, so this is Joe Shapiro. I've taken a buyout. Feel privileged to work at NPR since 2001. Proud of my stories, their impact. Grateful for the best audience.

[00:17:33]Tomorrow NPR will lay off my colleagues.

[00:17:35]Talented journalists will lose jobs, but few are laid off, we're told, for each who takes a buyout. That's it. If they offer you a buyout, I've been in this position before. If they offer you a buyout, take the buyout because the alternative is you might have your job for another couple of months, but they're going to fire you. So, take the buyout. Um, so he said, "Next for me, a follow-up to No Pity, I hope, my book on the disability civil rights movement."

[00:17:59]So, now I can write that book I want to write. I guess I guess that's a good thing. Uh Jeff Brumfield says, "Today is a really hard day at NPR. We're losing some good people, including people I'm very close to. The reasons for the layoffs are complicated. Now there's no money and the search has been turned off. Google has turned off search. So you're not going to make that money up in ad revenue. You're just not. We lost a lot of federal money, gained a lot of donations, but NPR isn't sure how sustainable those donations will be.

[00:18:27]Despite the cuts to federal funding, NPR has received a lifeline from a pair of charitable donations that totaled 113 million. Former NPR Foundation board member Connie Balmer donated 80 million.

[00:18:38]Must be nice to just have like $80 million to be like, "Here NPR, have some money. I found it in the couch cushions.

[00:18:46]Maybe maybe Elon will buy NPR, too." Oh, god. XPR or uh geez. Uh in order to improve the org's technological needs. Okay. And uh the second donor chose to remain anonymous. In addition, NPR PBS uh to NPRPBS slashed5% of its staff or about 100 positions in September. We did report on that. It's not looking good. I mean, we talked about that. Everybody is like, "Yeah, they're all freaking out.

[00:19:13]All these news outlets are freaking out because they know the end is near. This is not sustainable. They're going to have to pivot. They're going to sell.

[00:19:20]They're going to wind up uh making deals with people you probably never thought they would make deals with in a million years. I mean, we just talked about I think it was Vox uh sold itself or sold part of itself to uh one of the Murdochs to Murdoch Jr.

[00:19:39]like Fox Murdoch's. Yeah. Like I never would have seen that coming, but it's desperate times, man. Desperate times, right? Um but yeah, this article is actually pretty good. I would go out there and read it if you can find it.

[00:19:52]But they say Google has ditched its founding don't be evil ethos ages ago is now doing likewise. It's basically doing what Facebook and X are doing. This latest search prototype will wall you off from other people's writing, their products or very ideas. The underlying hope one imagines is you'll become more reliant on machines instead of real people for yourformational needs. Well, a lot of people are installing Duck Duck. Go and I think that this is going to continue. Yeah. And he mentions that too. He said, "Yeah, actually I agree with a lot of what he says. Not everything, but I agree with a lot of what he says." Said, "There's some faint hope internet users, myself included, are switching to Duck.Go as their default search options. And there are initial signs that the AI scam, and it is a scam, is losing traction with some of its impleers. Um, they've oversold its abilities and they spent a ridiculous amount of money and there's no hope of them getting that money back.

[00:20:44]So they're shoving it into everything to get people to, you know, agree to it. Basically, they're not agreeing to it. You've got a gun held to your head. It's like, you will use our AI search because we spent billions of dollars on this. And then we can go tell our shareholders that our usage is way up. And that's what's going to happen. Google's going to be like, you know, Alphabet's going to be like, "Hey guys, hey shareholders. Oh my god, the entire world suddenly decided it likes Gemini. Can you believe that? Look how many people are using Gemini. Well, yeah, cuz you replaced your search engine with Gemini. Just like Microsoft tried shoving Copilot into everything and people are like, "That's it. I'm going to Linux. I don't even know how to use Linux. I've never used Linux, but I'm going to Linux cuz I'm not using Microsoft." And that's what's going to happen here. Uh, so good luck with all of that. But, um, yeah, it's going to be very interesting to see what happens. I think there's going to be a lot of, uh, freaking out. And I know people are like, "Oh boy, I can't wait for these jouros to be out of work or whatever."

[00:21:44]There are some good jouros out there.

[00:21:46]There are some good websites out there.

[00:21:48]There are and you you don't think it's going to affect you, but if your company uses Google, I mean, we did a story that uh you know, if you upload the wrong things to the Google Drive, their AI will actually scan that drive now to see the contents of the drive. I mean, it's kind of scary, right? you don't think it's going to affect you, but you're watching this video probably on YouTube.

[00:22:10]Unless you guys are, you know, listening to the audio version, which you can listen to on iTunes and Spotify and elsewhere, but if you're watching this video on YouTube, you're affected by this. So, I'm I'm just saying things the internet is going to change forever and it's not going to change for the better in my opinion as the person who's been on the internet since the mid9s.

[00:22:32]Okay, I pretty much grew up on the internet and uh yeah, it's gonna it's gonna get real bad real quick if this is allowed to continue in my opinion. Going to wrap it up. Please subscribe. We'll talk later.