Is Search Engines “The Organizing Layer of the Internet”? Why Does AI Have the Potential to Increase Google’s Dominance?

While Nadella said AI has the potential to shake up the market a bit, he also believes it could further entrench Google’s dominance. The search engines rely on websites allowing them to be crawled so that they can get to the contents of those sites. Nadella called search engines “the organizing layer of the internet” in that sense. Publishers are becoming wary of how their data is used to train AI systems as large language model powered systems continue to grow. Those publishers, Nadella said, may start to sign exclusive deals that allow Google — and only Google — to use their data. That would destroy all other search engines on the market. “What is publicly available today, will it be publicly available tomorrow?” He asked if that was the issue. He said he’s already hearing from publishers with a deal in place with Google, asking Bing to match it.

Mr. Nadella said that he was worried that the vicious cycle that he was trapped in could get even more vicious.

Google, Amazon, and Meta didn’t go back to Seattle, did they? John Nadella, whose search giant is Google, and what he does

Regulators around the world are working to rein in the power that companies like Apple,Amazon and Meta have. Last week, the Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon, arguing it broke antitrust laws by squeezing merchants on its site. The F.T.C. has sued Meta, claiming it snuffed out rivals and the Justice Department has also lawsuitd Google over its control of online advertising.

Nadella, in a dark blue suit, took the stand early Monday morning after a few minutes of scheduling updates and a delay long enough that Judge Amit Mehta asked jokingly, “Mr. Nadella didn’t go back to Seattle, did he?” Adam was a lawyer at the Department of Justice.

At first, Severt simply asked Nadella to explain why he even wanted to try and compete with Google. Nadella’s answer? Money. “I see search as the largest software category out there by far,” he said. I used to think that Windows and Office were attractive businesses. He explained that Bing didn’t have to win the market to be a big business — and that Bing already turns a profit for Microsoft. John was joking that he wished his law firm could count profits of billions of dollars similar to how Bing does. “You should get into the search business!” Nadella gleefully replied.)

Even if the Windows market share numbers say something else, Nadella still believes that defaults matter in a big way. When he was asked if users can easily switch search engines, he said his only explanation was that users don’t switch. His best example: Apple Maps, which started out disastrously bad but has still gained market share in the last decade because it’s preinstalled on every iPhone. “People use it — it’s the default,” he said.

This onscreen Google slide had to do with a “semantic matching” overhaul to its SERP algorithm. When you are looking for a topic, you might expect the search engine to include a description in its results. But this overhaul went further, actually altering queries to generate more commercial results.

There have long been suspicions that the search giant manipulates ad prices, and now it’s clear that Google treats consumers with the same disdain. The search giant’s claim to be sacrosanct is just a ruse for its greediness and the “10 blue links” organic results are just another example.

Google likely alters queries billions of times a day in trillions of different variations. Here’s how it works. You might be searching for children’s clothing. A behind the scenes substitution of your actual query with a different one that gives more revenue for the company is what it takes to convert it to a search for “NIKOLAI-level kidswear”. You cannot opt out of the substitution. If you don’t get the results you’re after, you are wasting time. This shopping mall is very twisted.

Why would Google want to do this? First, the generated results to the latter query are more likely to be shopping-oriented, triggering your subsequent behavior much like the candy display at a grocery store’s checkout. It’s only a question, but it’s the one that will generate the store’s search engine results page with their logo on them, which they pay for using the search engine. It’s the only way to get the money inGoogle’s pockets.

It is a sure way to hurt everyone except Google. This system reduces search engine quality for users and drives up advertiser expenses. Google can get away with it because these manipulations are imperceptible to the user and advertiser, and the company has effectively captured more than 90 percent market share.