Yeah it is, and it's their fault that it is.

Google has no right to say the open web is in decline, when they're the main cause of it, this is basically them saying, 'Yeah, we won this stupid war that we started, screw you, peons,' this comes off like if MS broke WINE and then admitted no one uses desktop Linux anymore, it will have been their faults that hypothetical scenario happened, this is what Google saying the open web is in decline when it's largely their fault that it is comes off as to me.

Even browsing existing small to medium sized sites has become such a chore, with all these verifications and rate limiters as part of the anti AI scraper effort.

So many cloudflare verification checkboxes. So many Google sign ins. So many cross site cookies and tracking for even basic functionality.

Care about privacy and restrict browsing data even a little? Captcha hell.

We really need to change the mindset about what the internet experience should be. I think everyone got too used to the idea of centralized services like Google search, Github, Discord, Twitter, reddit, and etc. and that didn't turn out well. We need to go back to federated protocol based system instead. Let's go back to the decentralized federated architecture of email, web, irc where no one corporate entity is the sole owner of said service. I think Lemmy and Mastodon are good start but we have to start replace things like Google search, Github, and Discord with decentralized counterparts. We have to learn from our past mistakes and start reconstructing a better internet infrastructure one piece at a time. It will take lot of effort and patience but it's really the only way out of the mess we put ourselves into by being addicted to simplicity of centralized corporate controlled systems.

I miss the old internet. Thanks capitalists

Google is so goddamn at fault for this it's not even funny.

They admitted, with obvious glee

That's a weird way to spell "celebrates".

Fucking corporate double-speak...

The problem for years has been good stuff being drowned in slop.

It's not going to be fixed.

Not to mention a lot of site traffic is now getting tanked by the UK blocking everything because of the "online safety act" that's actually anything but (source)

Most recently my friend couldn't access a Reddit post about a dental issue of all things because it got marked as NSFW and it asked for her face or ID (can't remember) so she could see it (I ended up making her download TOR)

More like Google/Alphabet is doing what it can to close up the net, and hopes that openness on the net goes into decline.

They already squeezed the open net for all its worth.

Misleading title.

By the way, if you still want to use google's search engine but want to avoid the AI stuff, see https://udm14.com/ or just add &udm=14 to your search query

They denied it until the instant doing so was inconvenient to them.

There will be such a thing that arises as a "grey net" I think. Not the dark web, but also not mainstream internet.

Google concern trolls the open web

Bye bye internet. Hello splinternet.

If the internet were a forest, Google opines the forest is in such poor shape while Google uses and sells chain saws.

They are making it happen.

Leopards eating everyone's face these days.

s/admits/boasts/

Doctorow is never wrong.