Google Wounded the Internet, and AI Companies Are Treating the Injury with Mercury

Summary

The article argues that Google’s effort to organize the web through a single search entry point helped make information easier to find, but also created damaging incentives. Ranking competition, paid results, advertising-driven publishing, and content written mainly for search visibility narrowed the web experience and contributed to what the author calls its “enshittification.” By 2027, the author says, users may have to repeat a frustrating cycle of skipping ads, avoiding clickbait, dismissing cookie and newsletter prompts, and searching through pages filled with low-value material. AI companies appear to offer an alternative by searching the web and summarizing its contents, and the author sometimes prefers asking an AI system to browsing search results manually. The article’s central warning is that AI depends on the same underlying information environment: if its retrieval process finds engagement-optimized garbage, its polished answer may simply present that garbage more conveniently. The author says valuable material often remains on small, community-run sites that search engines and AI systems fail to surface. No solution is proposed, but the article suggests treating the problem as one of information organization and long-term preservation, where archivists may become increasingly important.