The Atlantic [free link]: “Google Search, like the rest of the internet, is pivoting to generative AI. The first step is Search Generative Experience, an experimental tool currently available as a public beta. Instead of sending you off to other corners of the web, more search results appear within Google. Sort of like ChatGPT, it pulls information from various websites, rewords it, and puts that text on top of your search results—pushing down any links you see. In the process, it stifles traffic to the rest of the internet, lessening the very incentive to post online. With AI, Google Search might eventually set off a doom loop for the web as we know it. Google might not feel like it has any choice. The explosion of ChatGPT poses perhaps the biggest threat to the company in its history. Instead of poking around on Google for a recipe and then scrolling endlessly, now you can just ask ChatGPT to create one for you (though it might not be particularly good)…If widely implemented, the peril of AI search is that it could eventually shrivel up much of the content that is now reliant on Google traffic for survival. Nothing is going to happen to the internet overnight, but websites hire people like me to notice and solve problems for readers because helpful information gets clicks. If publications aren’t rewarded with traffic, they are going to publish less information. Google claims it understands the stakes, though the company is notoriously secretive about how its algorithms work: The spokesperson told me the company will “continue to prioritize approaches that send valuable traffic to a wide range of creators and support a healthy, open web.” But the basic premise of a searchbot necessarily involves more text in Google, and less traffic to websites. Google’s AI doom loop may lead us into a much smaller version of the internet, with fewer sites, fewer posts—and thus a worse experience for all of us…”