Understanding Ordinary Events
The article explores how ordinary, everyday events shape our understanding of the world, arguing that paying attention to mundane occurrences can reveal deeper patterns and insights about life, society, and human behavior.
Background
The post argues that Google's "AI Overview" (formerly Search Generative Experience, SGE) — which surfaces AI-written answers at the top of search results — is a flawed product that degrades the web by draining traffic from the sites that produced the information it cribs from. The author frames this as Google capturing value created by others (publishers, forums, hobbyist communities) while giving little back. The piece also touches on how Google's internal "Site Diversity" rules sometimes force AI Overviews to cite obscure or low-quality sources (like a random Reddit comment or a small blog) to avoid over-relying on any single domain like Wikipedia. This is part of a broader online debate about AI-generated search results cannibalizing the open web, reducing incentives for people to publish original content, and concentrating power in Google's hands.