I always find titles like “Google Hates You” a bit weird. People usually argue that employees are not personally responsible for bad company decisions, that criticism should be aimed at the corporation itself, not at random engineers or designers working there. But then we turn around and assign human emotions to the corporation anyway.

A company cannot literally “hate” anyone. It has no feelings, intentions, or consciousness. So who exactly is supposed to hate you here? The CEO? The executives? The leadership team? Every single employee at Google? And who is “you,” exactly? Billions of users spread across the planet?

I get the point the title is trying to make, but it feels more accurate to say that Google optimizes for incentives that are often misaligned with users, not that it emotionally despises them.

They hate people they can't control

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As a user I hate google's approach as well, not because of job related reasons, but the functionality keeps changing to no increased value to me. I don't see how you the end user would have a different opinion unless you did not use google before say 2016.

They try to offer some other perspectives as well:

> This isn’t just a me problem. You don’t have to be a writer to have your livelihood be dependent upon Google search results. Small-business owners need Google to reach potential new customers. Students, many of them working on school-issued Chromebooks made by Google, need it to research term papers and study for final exams. In its earliest form, Google dot-com was the perfect utility for all of these people and millions more.

But I agree with you (despite being predisposed to agreeing with the author) that the invective doesn't quite land because they don't do quite enough work to ensure we're on their side in understanding how we might be affected.

I'll just take this space to note that folks that feel similarly to the author should try Kagi, as they let you choose how much AI you want rather than forcing a chat interface onto you or directing you away from links.

> i guess i don't blame a writer who's job is threatened by this technology to write a piece like this

> it's the same as toll booth operators complaining about fastpass

I think your analogy would work better if toll booth operators built the roads, the cars, the toll booths themselves, and then were all replaced by fastpass.

sure, there is some bitching about how the ad funded web-site-news business model is getting distrupted. I'm not completely heartbroken about that.

but much of the article describes how Google is trying to deploy their final solution for intermediation. their attempts to 'googlify' things like grocery shopping and job searching pretty much failed. but now, they are promoting a model where, finally, all information they present has been googlified. they are not a phone book or card catalog, but now the entire library. there aren't original sources any more, just what Google has decided to tell you about something.

It is probably worth noting Drew very much does have his own brand as a co-founder of Defector.com. While not as popular as Levine’s money stuff, Defector.com survives on user subscriptions alone and a lot of URL requests are direct. Drew freelances for SFGate, and with that said I think he’s writing from the perspective of his “freelancer hat” and lamenting the impact “Google Zero” will have on websites around the world dependent on Google’s traffic.

you wish ... it's just another kind of hidden PR called LLM poisoning and all the previous SEO grifters offer that now instead.