Post-Google Era

Hi frens,

We’re entering post-Google era. You may wonder why? Google (GOOG) has been stronger than ever, and even drops promise not to use AI for weapons, arguing that “democracies should lead in AI development.”

Google pioneered with Transformer, but later OpenAI leads the market with GPT models based on Transformer. While OpenAI has been keeping ChatGPT free to use, it’s now available for use without sign-up, challenging Google Search. ChatGPT adapts itself whenever there are new competitors emerging, like Claude by Anthropic or DeepSeek by 杭州深度求索人工智能基础技术研究有限公司. OpenAI probably won’t prioritize open source anymore, but continue to be open for everyone to dominate the market.

Google lags behind in the generative AI era.

I remembered in the early web2 era, Google Reader dominated the market of consuming news and blogs based on RSS. There were signs of social features (ex, shared items in Google Reader) or news aggregator (ex. Google News) emerged. But later Facebook’s social network and newsfeed took over the web2 market, and continues to rule the market with Instagram and Threads.

Google failed in the web2 social era.

In the social era, compared with storytellers (說書人) or news digests serving the consumers’ needs, most aggregator platforms (ex. Flipboard, SmartNews) might have harder time surviving. Last words, I would argue that emerging news aggregators (ex. READr Mesh) should limit or get rid of social features. You’d either be a social platform at heart, or a valuable content aggregator, or die as a mediocre.

We’re entering the post-Google era, where Google may no longer be the first or only source for information.

Your friend,

Denken