Kinda interesting how Google is releasing a big wave of enshitifications immediately prior to the Anthropic and OpenAI and spacex IPOs.

On assumes there is a strategic reason for it, but I'm not sure about what it is.

Anyone have a theory or care to guess?

Brace for impact...

So the web is now pay to play.

Comments speculating how to block these ads... isn't the simplest solution to just not use Google?

Seriously, I haven't used google products for 5 years at least, its easy. Why is everyone still using them?

Yeah, Lets build the next generation AI and slap an ads on it for a good measure.

Having AI do personalized sales as part of the ad appealing to what the customer actually needs is the future of advertising.

Is there any usable search engine out there that actually does just search?

Great. Google gets to hallucinate information and make us watch ads so they can earn money while they do it. Sci-Fi authors wish they could get a deal like that.

What AI Mode? (Glancing over to ublock)

Is anyone (here, so tech people) still using Google for searching?

I've ditched them about a decade ago, when the results started to become worse and worse.

I haven't opened them willingly since then. Only when I do something in Chromium, occasionally, it opens, because I haven't bothered changing the default search engine there.