Google Becomes AT&T

Useless for Search, Useless for Research

In my book on Moore’s Law, first written in 2001, I have a long chapter about AT&T. Its theme is the destructive power of technology debt, combined with the idiocy of a monopolist.

In the first edition of the book I wrote that Google was in the process of replacing AT&T. Over the next 20 years I watched that happen and documented it.

But now, Google itself has become AT&T.

Google’s search monopoly has become an enormous technology debt, in the two years since Generative AI appeared. GenAI is forcing Google to rebuild its infrastructure.

But there’s a difference. Where the original cloud was open source and built with the cheapest-possible server hardware, the AI Cloud is proprietary and built around expensive Nvidia chips.

Google is pouring $50 billion per year into the rebuild, but still has to maintain and monetize its search monopoly. There it’s rapidly losing ground to AI systems like Perplexity.  (Note that the link describing this is behind a paywall.)

Google has responded as AT&T did. It’s squeezing profits from search while destroying search at the same time. I’m seeing this as I try to update the Moore’s Law book again to account for AI. All links to Amazon.com and to news sites are now broken. When the links are seen by Google, they are diverted to the target sites’ home page. It means I can’t give inside addresses to my readers.

Instead, on every search I get these damn Gemini prompts that summarize what should be the first one or two results of the search. In fact, those two citations (whatever they are) are usually put forward as a definitive answer. The trouble is, they’re not.

Blame AI

Ever since ChatGPT was announced, Google has been closing services to save money. It’s continually laying off employees, including engineers, and moving vital functions to low-wage countries.

Meanwhile, it’s treating top executives like Sundar Pichai precisely as AT&T treated Randall Stephenson, the man who destroyed that company by moving it into content instead of the cloud. (Stephenson retired recently with a $64 million golden parachute, including a pension worth $264,000 per month.)

As to the book, I don’t know. My latest effort to edit it has forced me to switch links to Wikipedia. But when we’re dealing with recent events (such as Stephenson’s pension) what do I link to? Worse for those who use links, the Internet Archive is being hacked and forced to remove content based on copyright claims. The entire history of our time is being lost and the company that should, above all others, be on the side of preserving that history is instead destroying it.

When the government talks about breaking up Google, business rushes to its defense, calling it overreach. But it’s clear to me that such a breakup might unleash enormous value, because the present company is useless. If the Internet is to be saved, government must become involved in the effort to save it.

Sorry, Google.