Comment by pflenker
10 hours ago
A couple of years back I worked with a company which maintained specific data which was the main traffic driver on that page. Google approached them and wanted to pay for the rights to get the data and display it on top of the search results, a feature which was fairly new back then.
This was an interesting dilemma because it was very clear that the money was way less than the loss in ad revenue due to traffic drop, but it was also clear that if we wouldn’t take the deal, a more desperate competitor would, which would result in the same traffic loss but without the extra google money. So the company took the deal.
History repeats itself here, with the difference that instead of paying for the data, the ai crawlers simply take it for free.
This reminds me of Walmarts squeezing strategy with all the manufacturers. Business with us at the price we say or out of business.
Yep, this is exactly why some companies simply don't work with Walmart.
But ultimately that strategy is good for the consumer right?
In this context, if Google is going to give me the recipe without having to scroll through the story, that seems like a win to me.
The ad-revenue driven Internet of web 2.0 is finally dead and I'm not sure I'm all that sad.
Without some way to generate revenue, people aren't going to publish recipes (for Google to scrape into their AI.) Maybe we could live without more recipes being fed into the machine, but there are many other types of content that will suffer the same fate.
It would be nice to find something better than an ad-revenue driven web, but I'm not sure this is it. We'll find out I guess...
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> But ultimately that strategy is good for the consumer right?
No. Temporarily it’s good for the consumer. Ultimately it is bad for the consumer, because as prices drop, so to does quality.
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No, because now Google controls entirely what you see. They could decide to show you the recipe after all.
Also, at some point even the ad-laden websites will die, and then Googles sources will be extinguished.
it's because both google and walmart have too much market power
This is tough for the manufacturer, but great for the consumer.
I think it's a good tradeoff.
Real-world Prisoner's Dilemma.
It always comes back to game theory haha
[dead]
That doesn't feel like a repetition at all? You said that the first time there was "traffic loss but without the extra google money", but that this time there's no extra google money either way.
The part where data providers lose traffic because their own data is displayed directly on the google premises is what repeats.
"Nice data you got there, it'd be a shame if something were to happen to it"
The fact is that internet is already "tech giants own realm": the power is way beyond public imagination and affects all of us in real life on daily bases, but there are still people thinking they are not the "evil one" here.