Google Is Entering Its Janus Era
September 30, 2025
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
The Romans found the “god” Janus a way to demarcate the old from the new. (Yep, January is a variant of this religious belief: A threshold between old and new.
Venice.ai imagines Janus as a statue.
Google is at its Janus moment. Let me explain.
The past at Google was characterized by processing a two or three word “query” and providing the user with a list of allegedly relevant links. Over time, the relevance degraded and the “pay to play” ads began to become more important. Ed Zitron identified Prabhakar Raghavan as the Google genius associated with this money-making shift. (Good work, Prabhakar! Forget those Verity days.)
The future is signaled with two parallel Google tactics. Let me share my thoughts with you.
The first push at Google is its PR / marketing effort to position itself as the Big Dog in technology. Examples range from Google’s AI grand wizard passing judgment on the inferiority of a competitor. A good example of this approach is the Futurism write up titled “CEO of DeepMind Points Out the Obvious: OpenAI Is Lying about Having PhD Level AI.” The outline of Google’s approach is to use a grand wizard in London to state the obvious to those too stupid to understand that AI marketing is snake oil, a bit of baloney, and a couple of measuring cups of jargon. Thanks for the insight, Google.
The second push is that Google is working quietly to cut what costs it can. The outfit has oodles of market cap, but the cash burn for [a] data centers, [b] hardware and infrastructure, [c] software fixes when kids are told to eat rocks and glue cheese on pizza (remember the hallucination issues?), and [d] emergency red, yellow, orange, or whatever colors suits the crisis convert directly into additional costs. (Can you hear Sundar saying, “I don’t want to hear about costs. I want Gmail back online. Why are you still in my office?)
As a result of these two tactical moves, Google’s leadership is working overtime to project the cool, calm demeanor of a McKinsey-type consultant who just learned that his largest engagement client has decided to shift to another blue-chip firm. I would consider praying to Janus if that we me in my consulting role. I would also think about getting reassigned to project involving frequent travel to Myanmar and how to explain that to my wife.
Venice.ai puts a senior manager at a big search company in front of a group of well-paid but very nervous wizards.
What’s an example of sending a cost signal to the legions of 9-9-6 Googlers? Navigate to “Google Isn’t Kidding Around about Cost Cutting, Even Slashing Its FT subscription.” [Oh, FT means the weird orange newspaper, the Financial Times.] The write up reports as actual factual that Google is dumping people by “eliminating 35 percent of managers who oversee teams of three people or fewer.” Does that make a Googler feel good about becoming a Xoogler because he or she is in the same class as a cancelled newspaper subscription. Now that’s a piercing signal about the value of a Googler after the baloney some employees chew through to get hired in the first place.
The context for these two thrusts is that the good old days are becoming a memory. Why? That’s easy to answer. Just navigate to “Report: The Impact of AI Overviews in the Cultural Sector.” Skip the soft Twinkie filling and go for the numbers. Here’s a sampling of why Google is amping up its marketing and increasing its effort to cut what costs it can. (No one at Google wants to admit that the next big thing may be nothing more than a repeat of the crash of the enterprise search sector which put one executive in jail and others finding their future elsewhere like becoming a guide or posting on LinkedIn for a “living.”)
Here are some data and I quote from “Report: The Impact…”:
- Organic traffic is down 10% in early 2025 compared to the same period in 2024. On the surface, that may not sound bad, but search traffic rose 30% in 2024. That’s a 40-point swing in the wrong direction.
- 80% of organizations have seen decreases in search traffic. Of those that have increased their traffic from Google, most have done so at a much slower rate than last year.
- Informational content has been hit hardest. Visitor information, beginner-level articles, glossaries, and even online collections are seeing fewer clicks. Transactional content has held up better, so organizations that mostly care about their event and exhibition pages might not be feeling the effect yet.
- Visibility varies. On average, organizations appear in only 6% of relevant AI Overviews. Top performers are achieving 13% and they tend to have stronger SEO foundations in place.
My view of this is typical dinobaby. You Millennials, GenX, Y, Z, and Gen AI people will have a different view. (Let many flowers bloom.):
- Google is for the first time in its colorful history faced with problems in its advertising machine. Yeah, it worked so well for so long, but obviously something is creating change at the Google
- The mindless AI hyperbole has not given way to direct criticism of a competitor who has a history of being somewhat unpredictable. Nothing rattles the cage of big time consultants more than uncertainty. OpenAI is uncertainty on steroids.
- The impact of Google’s management methods is likely to be a catalyst for some volatile compounds at the Google. Employees and possibly contractors may become less docile. Money can buy their happiness I suppose, but the one thing Google wants to hang on to at this time is money to feed the AI furnace.
Net net: Google is going to be an interesting outfit to monitor in the next six months. Will the European Union continue to send Google big bills for violating its rules? Will the US government take action against the outfit one Federal judge said was a monopoly? Will Google’s executive leadership find itself driven into a corner if revenues and growth stall and then decline? Janus, what do you think?
Stephen E Arnold, September 30, 2025
A Googler Explains How AI Helps Creators and Advertisers in the Googley Maze
September 24, 2025
Sadly I am a dinobaby and too old and stupid to use smart software to create really wonderful short blog posts.
Most of Techmeme’s stories are paywalled. But one slipped through. (I wonder why?) Anyhow, the article in question is “An Interview with YouTube Neal Mohan about Building a Stage for Creators.” The interview is a long one. I want to focus on a couple of statements and offer a handful of observations.
The first comment by the Googler Mohan is this one:
Moving away from the old model of the cliché Madison Avenue type model of, “You go out to lunch and you negotiate a deal and it’s bespoke in this particular fashion because you were friends with the head of ad sales at that particular publisher”. So doing away with that model, and really frankly, democratizing the way advertising worked, which in our thesis, back to this kind of strategy book, would result in higher ROI for publishers, but also better ROI for advertisers.
The statement makes clear that disrupting advertising was the key to what is now the Google Double Click model. Instead of Madison Avenue, today there is the Google model. I think of it as a maze. Once one “gets into” the Google Double Click model, there is no obvious exit.
The art was generated by Venice.ai. No human needed. Sorry freelance artists on Fiverr.com. This is the future. It will come to YouTube as well.
Here’s the second I noted:
everything that we build is in service of people that are creative people, and I use the term “creator” writ large. YouTubers, artists, musicians, sports leagues, media, Hollywood, etc., and from that vantage point, it is really exceedingly clear that these AI capabilities are just that, they’re capabilities, they’re tools. But the thing that actually draws us to YouTube, what we want to watch are the original storytellers, the creators themselves.
The idea, in my interpretation, is that Google’s smart software is there to enable humans to be creative. AI is just a tool like an ice pick. Sure, the ice pick can be driven into someone’s heart, but that’s an extreme example of misuse of a simple tool. Our approach is to keep that ice pick for the artist who is going to create an ice sculpture.
Please, read the rest of this Googley interview to get a sense of the other concepts Google’s ad system and its AI are delivering to advertisers and “creators.”
Here’s my view:
- Google wants to get creators into the YouTube maze. Google wants advertisers to use the now 30 year old Google Double Click ad system. Everyone just enter the labyrinth.
- The rats will learn that the maze is the equivalent of a fish in an aquarium. What else will the fish know? Not too much. The aquarium is life. It is reality.
- Google has a captive, self-sustaining ecosystem. Creators create; advertisers advertise because people or systems want the content.
Now let me ask a question, “How does this closed ecosystem make more money?” The answer, according to Googler Mohan, a former consultant like others in Google leadership, is to become more efficient. How does one become more efficient? The answer is to replace expensive, popular creators with cheaper AI driven content produced by Google’s AI system.
Therefore, the words say one thin: Creator humans are essential. However, the trajectory of Google’s behavior is that Google wants to maximize its revenues. Just the threat or fear of using AI to knock off a hot new human engineered “content object” will allow the Google to reduce what it pays to a human until Google’s AI can eliminate those pesky, protesting, complaining humans. The advertisers want eyeballs. That’s what Google will deliver. Where will the advertisers go? Craigslist, Nextdoor, X.com?
Net net: Money is more important to Google than human creators. I know I am a dinobaby and probably incorrect. That’s how I see the Google.
Stephen E Arnold, September 24, 2025
Google Tactic: Blame Others for an Issue
September 23, 2025
Sadly I am a dinobaby and too old and stupid to use smart software to create really wonderful short blog posts.
The shift from irrelevant, SEO-corrupted results to the hallucinating world of Google smart software is allegedly affecting traffic to some sites. Google is on top of the situation. Its tireless wizards and even more tireless smart software is keeping track of ads. Oh, sorry, I mean Web site traffic. With AI making everything better for users, the complaints about declining referral traffic are annoying.
Google has an answer. “YouTube Addresses Lower View Counts Which Seem to Be Caused by Ad Blockers” reports:
Since mid-August, many YouTubers have noticed their view counts are considerably lower than they were before, in some cases with very drastic drops. The reason for the drop, though, has been shrouded in mystery for many creators.
Then adds:
The most likely explanation seems to be that YouTube is not counting views properly for users with an ad blocker enabled, another step in the platform’s continued war on ad blockers.
Yeah, maybe.
My view is that Google is steering traffic across its platform to extract as much revenue as possible. The model is the one used by olive oil producers. The good stuff is golden. The processes to squeeze the juice produces results that are unsatisfactory to some. The broken recommendations system, the smart summaries in search, and the other quantumly supreme innovations have fouled the gears in the Google advertising machine. That means Google has to up the amount of money it can obtain by squeezing harder.
How does one fix something that is the equivalent of an electric generator that once whizzed at Niagara Falls? That’s easy: One wraps it in something better, faster, and cheaper. Oh, I forgot easier to do. Googlers are busy people. Easy is efficient if it is cheap or produces additional revenue. The better outcome is to do both: Lower costs and boost revenue.
Google is going to have the same experience reinventing itself that IBM and Intel are experiencing. You may think I am just a bonkers dinobaby. Yeah, maybe. But, maybe not.
Stephen E Arnold, September 23, 2025
Google Emits a Tiny Signal: Is It Stress or Just a Brilliant Management Move?
September 22, 2025
Sadly I am a dinobaby and too old and stupid to use smart software to create really wonderful short blog posts.
Google is chock full of technical and management wizards. Anything the firm does is a peak action. With the Google doing so many forward leaning things each day, it is possible for certain staggering insightful moments to be lost in the blitz of scintillating breakthroughs.
Tom’s Hardware spotted one sparkling decider diamond. “Google Terminates 200 AI Contractors — Ramp-Down Blamed, But Workers Claim Questions Over Pay and Job Insecurity Are the Real Reason Behind Layoffs” says:
Some believe they were let go because of complaints over working conditions and compensation.
Goes Google have a cancel culture?
The write up notes:
For the first half of 2025, AI growth was everywhere, and all the major companies were spending big to try to get ahead. Meta was offering individuals hundreds of millions to join its ranks … But while announcements of enormous industry deals continue, there’s also a lot of talk of contraction, particularly when it comes to lower-level positions like data annotation and AI response rating.
The individuals who are now free to find their future elsewhere have some ideas about why they were deleted from Google and promoted to Xooglers (former Google employees). The write up reports:
… many of them [the terminated with extreme Googliness] believe that it is their complaints over compensation that lead to them being laid off…. [Some] workers “attempted to unionize” earlier in the year to no avail. According to the report, “they [the future finders] allege that the company has retaliated against them.” … For its part, Google said in a statement that GlobalLogic is responsible for the working conditions of its employees.
See the brilliance of the management move. Google blames another outfit. Google reduces costs. Google makes it clear that grousing is not an path to the Google leadership enclave. Google AI is unscathed.
Google is A Number One in management in my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, September 22, 2025
AI Poker: China Has Three Aces. Google, Your Play
September 19, 2025
No smart software involved. Just a dinobaby’s work.
TV poker seems to be a thing on free or low cost US television streams. A group of people squint, sigh, and fiddle as each tries to win the big pile of cash. Another poker game is underway in the “next big thing” of smart software or AI.
Google released the Nano Banana image generator. Social media hummed. Okay, that looks like a winning hand. But another player dropped some coin on the table, squinted at the Google, and smirked just a tiny bit.
“ByteDance Unveils New AI Image Model to Rival DeepMind’s Nano Banana” explains the poker play this way:
TikTok-owner ByteDance has launched its latest image generation artificial intelligence tool Seedream 4.0, which it said surpasses Google DeepMind’s viral “Nano Banana” AI image editor across several key indicators.
Now the cute jargon may make the poker hand friendly, there is menace behind the terminology. The write up states:
ByteDance claims that Seedream 4.0 beat Gemini 2.5 Flash Image for image generation and editing on its internal evaluation benchmark MagicBench, with stronger performance in prompt adherence, alignment and aesthetics.
Okay, prompt adherence, alignment (what the heck is that?), and aesthetics. That’s three aces right.
Who has the cost advantage? The write up says:
On Fal.ai, a global generative media hosting platform, Seedream 4.0 costs US$0.03 per generated image, while Gemini 2.5 Flash Image is priced at US$0.039.
I thought in poker one raised the stakes. Well, in AI poker one lowers the price in order to raise the stakes. These players are betting the money burned in the AI furnace will be “won” as the game progresses. Will AI poker turn up on the US free TV services? Probably. Burning cash makes for wonderful viewing, especially for those who are writing the checks.
What’s China’s view of this type of gambling? The write up says:
The state has signaled its support for AI-generated content by recognizing their copyright in late 2023, but has also recently introduced mandatory labelling of such content.
The game is not over. (Am I the only person who thinks that the name “nana banana” would have been better than “nano banana”?)
Stephen E Arnold, September 19, 2025
Google: Is It Becoming Microapple?
September 19, 2025
Google’s approach to Android, the freedom to pay Apple to make Google search the default for Safari, and the registering of developers — These are Tim Apple moves. Google has another trendlet too.
Google has 1.8 billion users around the world and according to the Mens Journal Google has a new problem: “Google Issues Major Warning to All 1.8 Billion Users.” There’s a new digital security threat and it involves AI. That’s not a surprise, because artificial intelligence has been a growing concern for cyber security experts for years. Since the technology is becoming more advanced, bad actors are using it for devious actions. The newest round of black hat tricks are called “indirect prompt injections.”
Indirect prompt injections are a threat for individual users, businesses, and governments. Google warned users about this new threat and how it works:
“‘Unlike direct prompt injections, where an attacker directly inputs malicious commands into a prompt, indirect prompt injections involve hidden malicious instructions within external data sources. These may include emails, documents, or calendar invites that instruct AI to exfiltrate user data or execute other rogue actions,’ the blog post continued.
The Google blog post warned that this puts individuals and entities at risk.
‘As more governments, businesses, and individuals adopt generative AI to get more done, this subtle yet potentially potent attack becomes increasingly pertinent across the industry, demanding immediate attention and robust security measures,’ the blog post continued.”
Bad actors have tasked Google’s Gemini (Shock! Gasp!) to infiltrate emails and ask users for their passwords and login information. That’s not the scary part. Most spammy emails have a link for users to click on to collect data, instead this new hack uses Gemini to prompt users for the information. Downloading fear.
Google is already working on counter measures for Gemini. Good luck! Microsoft has had this problem for years! Google and Microsoft are now twins! Is this the era of Google as Microapple?
Whitney Grace, September 19, 2025
YouTube: Behind the Scenes Cleverness?
September 17, 2025
No smart software involved. Just a dinobaby’s work.
I read “YouTube Is a Mysterious Monopoly.” The author tackles the subject of YouTube and how it seems to be making life interesting for some “creators.” In many countries, YouTube is television. I discovered this by accident in Bucharest, Cape Town, and Santiago, to name three locations where locals told me, “I watch YouTube.”
The write up offers some comments about this Google service. Let’s look at a couple of these.
First, the write up says:
…while views are down, likes and revenue have been mostly steady. He guesses that this might be caused by a change in how views are calculated, but it’s just a guess. YouTube hasn’t mentioned anything about a change, and the drop in views has been going on for about a month.
About five years ago, one of the companies with which I have worked for a while, pointed out that their Web site traffic was drifting down. As we monitored traffic and ad revenues, we noticed initial stability and then a continuing decline in both traffic and ad revenue. I recall we checked some data about competitive sites and most were experiencing the same drift downwards. Several were steady or growing. My client told me that Google was not able to provide substantive information. Is this type of decline an accident or is it what I call traffic shaping for Google’s revenue? No one has provided information to make this decline clear. Today (September 10, 2025) the explanation is related to smart software. I have my doubts. I think it is Google cleverness.
Second, the write up states:
I pay for YouTube Premium. For my money, it’s the best bang-for-the-buck subscription service on the market. I also think that YouTube is a monopoly. There are some alternatives — I also pay for Nebula, for example — but they’re tiny in comparison. YouTube is effectively the place to watch video on the internet.
In the US, Google has been tagged with the term “monopoly.” I find it interesting that YouTube is allegedly wearing a T shirt that says, “The only game in town.” I think that YouTube has become today’s version of the Google online search service. We have people dependent on the service for money, and we have some signals that Google is putting its thumb on the revenue scale or is suffering from what users are able to view on the service. Also, we have similar opaqueness about who or what is fiddling the dials. If a video or a Web site does not appear in a search result, that site may as well not exist for some people. The write up comes out and uses the “monopoly” word for YouTube.
Finally, the essay offers this statement:
Creators are forced to share notes and read tea leaves as weird things happen to their traffic. I can only guess how demoralizing that must feel.
For me, this comment illustrates that the experience of my client’s declining traffic and ad revenue seems to be taking place in the YouTube “datasphere.” What is a person dependent on YouTube revenue supposed to do when views drop or the vaunted YouTube search service does not display a hit for a video directly relevant to a user’s search. OSINT experts have compiled information about “Google dorks.” These are hit-and-miss methods to dig a relevant item from the Google index. But finding a video is a bit tricky, and there are fewer Google dorks to unlock YouTube content than for other types of information in the Google index.
What do I make of this? Several preliminary observations are warranted. First, Google is hugely successful, but the costs of running the operation and the quite difficult task of controlling the costs of ping, pipes, and power, the cost of people, and the expense of dealing with pesky government regulators. The “steering” of traffic and revenue to creators is possibly a way to hit financial targets.
Second, I think Google’s size and its incentive programs allow certain “deciders” to make changes that have local and global implications. Another Googler has to figure out what changed, and that may be too much work. The result is that Googlers don’t have a clue what’s going on.
Third, Google appears to be focused on creating walled gardens for what it views as “Web content” and for creator-generated content. What happens when a creator quits YouTube? I have heard that Google’s nifty AI may be able to extract the magnetic points of the disappeared created and let its AI crank out a satisfactory simulacrum. Hey, what are those YouTube viewers in Santiago going to watch on their Android mobile device?
My answer to this rhetorical question is the creator and Google “features” that generate the most traffic. What are these programs? A list of the alleged top 10 hits on YouTube is available at https://mashable.com/article/most-subscribed-youtube-channels. I want to point out that the Google holds down position in its own list spots number four and number 10. The four spot is Google Movies, a blend of free with ads, rent the video, “buy” the video which sort of puzzles me, and subscribe to a stream. The number 10 spot is Google’s own music “channel”. I think that works out to YouTube’s hosting of 10 big draw streams and services. Of those 10, the Google is 20 percent of the action. What percentage will be “Google” properties in a year?
Net net: Monitoring YouTube policy, technical, and creator data may help convert these observations into concrete factoids. On the other hand, you are one click away from what exactly? Answer: Daily Motion or RuTube? Mysterious, right?
Stephen E Arnold, September 17, 2025
Google: The EC Wants Cash, Lots of Cash
September 15, 2025
Sadly I am a dinobaby and too old and stupid to use smart software to create really wonderful short blog posts.
The European Commission is not on the same page as the judge involved in the Google case. Googzilla is having a bit of a vacay because Android and Chrome are still able to attend the big data party. But the EC? Not invited and definitely not welcome. “Commission Fines Google €2.95 Billion over Abusive Practices in Online Advertising Technology” states:
The European Commission has fined Google €2.95 billion for breaching EU antitrust rules by distorting competition in the advertising technology industry (‘adtech’). It did so by favouring its own online display advertising technology services to the detriment of competing providers of advertising technology services, advertisers and online publishers. The Commission has ordered Google (i) to bring these self-preferencing practices to an end; and (ii) to implement measures to cease its inherent conflicts of interest along the adtech supply chain. Google has now 60 days to inform the Commission about how it intends to do so.
The news release includes a third grade type diagram, presumably to make sure that American legal eagles who may not read at the same grade level as their European counterparts can figure out the scheme. Here it is:
For me, the main point is Google is in the middle. This racks up what crypto cronies call “gas fees” or service charges. Whatever happens Google gets some money and no other diners are allowed in the Mountain View giant’s dining hall.
There are explanations and other diagrams in the cited article. The main point is clear: The EC is not cowed by the Googlers nor their rationalizations and explanations about how much good the firm does.
Stephen E Arnold, September 15, 2025
Here Is a Happy Thought: The Web Is Dead
September 12, 2025
Just a dinobaby sharing observations. No AI involved. My apologies to those who rely on it for their wisdom, knowledge, and insights.
I read “One of the Last, Best Hopes for Saving the Open Web and a Free Press Is Dead.” If the headline is insufficiently ominous, how about the subtitle:
The Google ruling is a disaster. Let the AI slop flow and the writers, journalists and creators get squeezed.
The write up says:
Google, of course, was one of the worst actors. It controlled (and still controls) an astonishing 90% of the search engine market, and did so not by consistently offering the best product—most longtime users recognize the utility of Google Search has been in a prolonged state of decline—but by inking enormous payola deals with Apple and Android phone manufacturers to ensure Google is the default search engine on their products.
The subject is the US government court’s ruling that Google must share. Google’s other activities are just ducky. The write up presents this comment:
The only reason that OpenAI could even attempt to do anything that might remotely be considered competing with Google is that OpenAI managed to raise world-historic amounts of venture capital. OpenAI has raised $60 billion, a staggering figure, but also a sum that still very much might not be enough to compete in an absurdly capital intensive business against a decadal search monopoly. After all, Google drops $60 billion just to ensure its search engine is the default choice on a single web browser for three years. [Note: The SAT word “decadal” sort of means over 10 years. The Google has been doing search control for more than 20 years, but “more than 20 years is not sufficiently erudite I guess.]
The point is that competition in the number scale means that elephants are fighting. Guess what loses? The grass, the ants, and earthworms.
The write up concludes:
The 2024 ruling that Google was an illegal monopoly was a glimmer of hope at a time when platforms were concentrating ever more power, Silicon Valley oligarchy was on the rise, and it was clear the big tech cartels that effectively control the public internet were more than fine with overrunning it with AI slop. That ruling suggested there was some institutional will to fight against the corporate consolidation that has come to dominate the modern web, and modern life. It proved to be an illusion.
Several observations are warranted:
- Money talks; common sense walks
- AI is having dinner at the White House; the legal eagles involved in this high-profile matter got the message
- I was not surprised; the author, surprised and somewhat annoyed that the Internet is dead.
The US mechanisms remind me of how my father described government institutions in Campinas, Brazil, in the 1950s: Carry contos and distribute them freely. [Note: A conto was 1,000 cruzeiros at the time. Today the word applies to 1,000 reais.]
Stephen E Arnold, September 12, 2025
Google: Klaxons, Red Lights, and Beeps
September 12, 2025
Here we go again with another warning from Google about scams in the form of Gemini. The Mirror reports that, “Google Issues ‘Red Alert’ To Gmail Users Over New AI Scam That Steals Passwords.” Bad actors are stealing passwords using Google’s own chatbot. Hackers are sending emails using Gemini. These emails contain a hidden message to reveal passwords.
Here’s how people are falling for the scam: there’s no link to click in the email. A box pops up alerting you to a risk. That’s all! It’s incredibly simple and scary. Remember that Google will never ask you for your username and password. It’s still the easiest tip to remember when it comes to these scams.
Google issued a statement:
“The tech giant explained the subtlety of the threat: ‘Unlike direct prompt injections, where an attacker directly inputs malicious commands into a prompt, indirect prompt injections involve hidden malicious instructions within external data sources. These may include emails, documents, or calendar invites that instruct AI to exfiltrate user data or execute other rogue actions.’ As more governments, businesses, and individuals adopt generative AI to get more done, this subtle yet potentially potent attack becomes increasingly pertinent across the industry, demanding immediate attention and robust security measures.’”
Google also said some calming platitudes but the record replay is getting tiresome.
Whitney Grace, September 12, 2025
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