Tag: AI

Google Search and the Paywall: A consequence of near monopolistic power

Google is a company that has been controlling the search market in its grip for well over 20 years at this point. While the company offers many convenient services, it has also become a monopoly. Some people would disagree with that but the company is one and also is also dominating in mobile phones with the android operating system. There is a need for the internet to untangle from this monopolistic system that Google has made. Just for the interests of keeping the internet interesting and useful for many types of people, that is important. However, one of the main reasons why I am focusing on this issue is because of paywalls on news sites.

Paywalls used to be rarer in the past. Only really the WSJ (Wall Street Journal) had them in a significant way. However, as time has gone on and the internet went from a place for bragging rights to a necessity for someone to be able to have a journalism career, paywalls have been going up across cyberspace. The building of walls across the internet feels like an admission of failure of the internet’s ability to reduce the cost of producing news. I have seen it in real-time here; this is not a change that one sees through generations but it happened after 2008 and we have seen more and more paywalls.

Google’s inability to categorize paywalls is huge issue. Their unwillingness to categorize websites to make it more useful to the public shows their institutional inertia. The company makes billions upon billions of dollars on advertising, yet it is unable to even pay attention to its search engine that made it popular in the 2000s.

Why is Google so unwilling to change?

It’s because they are comfortable in taking ad revenue from sites. Changing that revenue stream would make them take a hit and they can only tolerate having more and more revenue streaming into it.

If Google was to take its search engine seriously, it would take a hit to its reputation. It would have to respond to all the calls about it having a monopoly on the internet and manipulating people’s minds. They would have to make the legacy outlets which seek to maintain their power have to play by the rules rather just allowing them to regurgitate what the ruling parties want to see.

Paywalled sites do need to not show up in the search results. Many of these sites are business sites that often hide their arcane language away from public view. The internet should be divided up into small kingdoms where you have to pay entry fees to get into the castle.

Google’s unwillingness to categorize such things show that monopolies that hold onto power for so long have a way of shaping the whole culture around them. The internet, once free and vibrant, is becoming yet another shopping mall where everything has a price.

Having free access to information on the internet isn’t a right but essential aspect to cyberspace.

Tesla and Waymo wars ramp up in Austin with geofence expansion.

https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-kicks-robotaxi-geofence-expansion-into-high-gear-austin/

Tesla and Waymo are continuing to increase their presence in the Texas capital which has been a hub for driverless car experimentation. While America is somewhat behind China in the implementation of a revolution in auto mobility, we are seeing some changes here.

What I think will be most important here is that the companies have affordable rides for customers of every stripe in the city and other places. Safety is important but we also need to have people willing to take risks so that we become less reliant on cars and help to improve our urban mobility in this era of change. Hopefully, these rollouts are smooth and we are able to enjoy transport without the baggage that so often made our lives too chaotic. We may have a chance to be more creative and conscious of each other as humans if we can just take our hands off the wheels and enjoy our cities.

DeepSeek facing countrywide bans in 2025: The Internet Cold War?

Deepseek AI made quite a splash when it was released in January. It caused Nasdaq’s stock to drop temporarily but the company has been the target of many western attacks.

The issue with DeepSeek is simply the same thing that ByteDance is facing with TikTok: Its a Chinese app.

For many years, China was able to be in the order, build its economy, while the West was hoping it would become more like them, while Putin’s Russia was the corrupt offshoot which was not following their orders. China has an ancient culture which was making advanced Jade sculptures in its Neolithic cultures, is not going to bend to Europe. China has a sophisticated political culture, and its people have generations of political wisdom unlike the Russians.

DeepSeek has made Generative AI much cheaper. While some were trying to criticize it, the app has gotten millions of users. It has been very successful and it making headways across the AI space.

Deepseek has been facing bans in the bureaucracies of Western European countries. However, I believe that the European countries are doing a disservice to their populations.

Chinese tech is spreading across the globe. Xiaomi has been making many competitive devices and putting European brands such as Philips to shame. I think that DeepSeek will be a viable competitor to Open AI and Elon Musk’s Grok AI.

This Internet Cold War is a consequence of the age of globalization been driven by the West thinking that China would just come into its own cultural sphere.

The main problem is that the West is arrogant and is reliant on its own success in the past. China’s DeepSeek is going to be competitive with Yandex’s Alice and Baidu’s AI. It is going to be sort of a BRICS style AI consortium.