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that "Google made their search results worse on purpose to get more ad impressions" article that's going around is based on an internal email chain from a legal filing, in which an employee mentions this potential approach for increasing engagement metrics... as an example of a bad approach and not something they'd be comfortable doing.

based on my reading, there's nothing in here that says they actually did it. I can't see anything in there that supports that claim.

justice.gov/d9/2023-11/417557.

the article links to the results of a survey on people's perception on the quality of Google results over time, showing a negative trend, and I think that's something we all share similar anecdotal feelings about. but then it goes on to make the direct claim that they did it on purpose, which is (as far as I can tell) a claim without any concrete basis.

certainly unsatisfying that Google is not unambiguously the bad guy in this case, but since there's no actual evidence of malfeasance it's just straight up misinfo

the fact that search quality seems to have dropped in the months after this email chain doesn't concretely support a causative link or intent. the push towards AI summaries likely impacted a lot of that. do I think it was pure incompetence? probably not. do I think it was 100% premeditated malice? also probably not. my gut says they expected AI summaries to increase engagement, and then they did but not for the right reasons, and then multiple incentives coincided so they kept it.

@gsuberland also we shouldnt forget that search quality gets worse because people over time figure out how to SEO their shitsites
that probably makes a sizeable amount of why