Worthy Read is an ongoing segment where I share a bit of Internet writing I really dug, and I feel like is worth your precious time.
If you want people to read your work, and I do, you must pay tribute to the SEO gods if you want that writing to be easily discovered. And you must kneel before one SEO god in particular: Google. Google has ruled the search engine market for the entirety of this century, which is why every media outlet I’ve ever worked at, this one included, has dedicated nearly endless amounts of both personnel and tech to make sure that when you, the reader, search for articles on why Meta’s new sunglasses make you look like a complete tool, by God that’s exactly what you get.
But, while slaving away at perfecting their search engine optimization infrastructure, none of those outlets ever seriously asked themselves the question, what if there comes a day when the search engine optimizes for itself, and only itself?
That day has arrived. You and I know that the quality of Google’s search results has been lacking for years now. But last week, the company announced plans to essentially kill off its search results entirely, addressing all of your queries with its Gemini AI agent instead. Look at this horrible s—t. Look at it!
I remember — vividly — when Google was this incredible incubator of technology that made the internet all the more wonderful and enjoyable. A great search engine, email with a ton of free storage, and other tools which made this here Internet all the better.
And yet… here we are. What a goddamned mess.
Time to look into moving my email hosting away from Google, and time to continue to use Duck Duck Go for searches.
I was right to continue to hold a grudge after the death of Google Reader.