Pluralistic: Gemini is better than search because Google enshittified search (29 Jun 2026)
Google's AI search summaries have become popular because Google deliberately degraded its search results and the open web to boost ad revenue, a process called "enshittification." The company broke the symbiotic bargain with publishers, prioritizing spam sites and killing ad-blocking, turning itself from a neutral conduit into a parasitic walled garden.
Background
Cory Doctorow (author, activist, coined "enshittification") argues that people use Google's AI summaries (Gemini) because Google deliberately ruined its own search results. Google, convicted as a monopoly, started ranking spammy, ad-stuffed sites over quality ones to maximize ad revenue, degrading the open web. Now Gemini answers queries without sending users to actual websites, breaking the bargain that kept publishers alive. Kagi (a paid search engine) rents Google's raw index but ranks it differently, proving Google could fix search but chooses not to. The web's pop-up and SEO garbage problem is largely caused by Google's ad monopoly, which pays publishers so little they must bury content in ads.