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   Kevlin Henney (kevlin@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 07-Aug-2026 07:00:45 JST Kevlin Henney

   There's a belief AI broke search. It was broken long before that, for both product sites and regular web search.

   What broke search was not AI but greed.

   Reminded of this just now when I looked up an author on Amazon. The author's name is unique, so should return an exact match. None of the result set was visible without scrolling, just 'sponsored' irrelevance.

   Sponsorship is a euphemism for interfering with the user's intent for the sake of money.

   This is search — and has been for a while.

   • Steve's Place repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Daniel Terhorst-North (tastapod@mas.to)'s status on Saturday, 08-Aug-2026 05:25:15 JST Daniel Terhorst-North

     in reply to

     @kevlin Google has never been a search company. It is an advertising company that uses search as the means to sell your attention to advertisers.

     It subsequently discovered that it can use streaming video to sell your attention to advertisers.

     Now it is using AI to sell your attention to advertisers.

     The mistake is in believing it has any interest in search beyond that.