this post was submitted on 22 May 2024
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The moment word was that Reddit (and now Stackoverflow) were tightening APIs to then sell our conversations to AI was when the game was given away. And I'm sure there were moments or clues before that.
This was when the "you're the product if its free" arrangement metastasised into "you're a data farming serf for a feudal digital overlord whether you pay or not".
Google search transitioning from Good search engine for the internet -> Bad search engine serving SEO crap and ads -> Just use our AI and forget about the internet is more of the same. That their search engine is dominated by SEO and Ads is part of it ... the internet, IE other people's content isn't valuable any more, not with any sovereignty or dignity, least of all the kind envisioned in the ideals of the internet.
The goal now is to be the new internet, where you can bet your ass that there will not be any Tim Berners-Lee open sourcing this. Instead, the internet that we all made is now a feudal landscape on which we all technically "live" and in which we all technically produce content, but which is now all owned, governed and consumed by big tech for their own profits.
I recall back around the start of YouTube, which IIRC was the first hype moment for the internet after the dotcom crash, there was talk about what structures would emerge on the internet ... whether new structures would be created or whether older economic structures would impose themselves and colonise the space. I wasn't thinking too hard at the time, but it seemed intuitive to that older structures would at least try very hard to impose themselves.
But I never thought anything like this would happen. That the cloud, search/google, mega platforms and AI would swallow the whole thing up.
Especially coming from Google, who was one of the good guys pushing open standards and interoperability.
Eh, open-sourcing is just good business, the only reason every big tech company doesn't is that loads of executives are stuck in the past. Of course having random people on the internet do labor for you for free is something Google would want. They get the advantage of tens of thousands of extra eyes on their code pointing out potential security vulnerabilities and they can just put all the really shady shit in proprietary blobs like Google Play Services, they're getting the best of both worlds as far as they're concerned.
Large publicly-traded companies do not do anything for the good of anyone but themselves, they are literally Legally Obligated to make the most profitable decisions for themselves at all times. If they're open-sourcing things it's to make money, not because they were "good guys".