The recent antitrust ruling against Google highlights a much deeper issue; trust in information surfaced by search.
While Google’s dominance, at least in part, stems from its illegal monopolistic practice of “buying the default” with Apple and others, it has maintained a veneer of trust for many people.
However, the elephant in the room is AI.
AI-powered search engines, like those from Microsoft, OpenAI, Apple, and, of course, Google, all claim a future where they attest to the authenticity and provenance of the information they provide.
That is, if we trust Apple, OpenAI, Google, and the rest.
And even if we do, AI is far from perfect.
All generative AI suffers from hallucinations, or at least a serious lack of verifiable transparency, when it comes to the authenticity and provenance of the information it provides.
In a word, search is losing our TRUST.
And AI does not promise to restore it.
Not yet anyway.
[2024-08-07 Wed 11:20]
For background about the ruling see: