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Google Search’s “udm=14” trick lets you kill AI search for good (arstechnica.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (2 children)

That's what's really confusing me: why add an expensive feature, that obviously doesn't work and even in the best case adds only minor improvements?

I mean, it's not another option like with Bing. It's the default. Every stupid little search will take up AI resources. For what? Market cap?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

My guess is that google has been losing the public perception of an innovative company, and started to be felt as a big stable and slow moving one instead, and they're trying so desperately to take back the previous public perception. They're seeing the ai hype and the investment microsoft is doing on it. They probably also fear that bing might break their monopoly, and want to fully integrate some ai in their product, to prevent the competition from arising and passing the image of an innovative company.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Rather market penetration among the gullible, which leads to more ad impressions, which lead to ad income, which leads to market cap.

I bet they have an alternative plan in the back burner to slash that AI the moment they see it reduce ad income in their A/B testing... but right now the AI buzzword is strong in the air, it's 2024's main attractor for the most ad-targetable customers.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

They're using it now to train it. Once it gets real good and people like and rely on it, it'll get paywalled.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

It won't get paywalled. Instead they will let it get useful then start injecting ads into it once people trust it.