The World After Google News

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Oct 20, 2023

And social control media's rapid collapse (which social control media 'addicts' still refuse to accept because their eggs are in that basket)

YESTERDAY we published three articles (initially in Tux Machines) about the demise of Google News [1-4] and what this will mean (for months or years to come), what likely caused it (legal issues have played a role for over a decade already, making the service worse... even a disservice), and where we stand at the moment. It does not look encouraging for Google. Google does not lay off workers like a 'hobby'; layoffs are detrimental to morale and hamper recruitment efforts (talented people don't wish to join a company that banishes its own people, right and left). Hiring freezes may mean Google stopped caring about recruitment anyway; it just wants many people to leave of their own volition and demanding that workers return to the office can accelerate that a bit (then they dodge their growing severance obligations). Remember that hiring freezes necessarily mean shrinking (while signalling the opposite in public) because many people retire or go elsewhere every year. Microsoft also froze the salaries of workers, most of whom would rather work somewhere else.

We abandoned Google News a while back, but sometimes we just check a thing or two there (about once a day). Google News was doomed to fail, even before laws were passed to "save journalism" (while in practice doing the very opposite!), and its quality deteriorated a lot. It was full of spam, plagiarism, and totally irrelevant stuff. It's as if Google News basically gave up entirely. We meanwhile continue to develop, at least for our own use (although all the code is published through Git), Free software and self-hosted alternatives to Google News. We made some user interfaces for 2 of them, but they're not (yet) sufficiently easy to install. Not only does this site rely on such software; the IRC channels and Tux Machines rely on that as well.

QuiteRSS has not had any new releases since 21.04.2020, it's based in Russia (which invaded Ukraine 2 years later), and the toolkit/stack it uses is based on Qt. Qt became proprietary again (just months later). Now it's proprietary only, so it's hard to recommend QuiteRSS like we did 2 years ago [1, 2] while strongly advocating RSS feeds at social control media's expense (before the latter's collapse not only accelerated but was confirmed, validated, and openly admitted by this domain's giants, sending them into a frantic tailspin). █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Google announces fresh round of job cuts: All the details

   Google has laid off around 40 employees from its Google News division. This is the third time the company has announced job cuts in 2023, with thousands of people being let go previously. Other tech giants like Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Intel have also been cutting jobs this year. Even startups and unicorn startups have been affected by layoffs. The tech industry continues to see a wave of job cuts in 2023.

2. Google parent Alphabet lays off workers in News, Verily and Waymo divisions: Report - The Hindu

   Alphabet, parent of Google, has laid off workers in Google News, Verily and Waymo, cutting costs despite earlier job cuts. The layoffs in Google News reportedly impacts 40-45 workers, amid scrutiny of tech giants' inability to stop the spread of misinformation about the Israel-Hamas conflict.

3. Google lays off dozens in its news division: report

   Dozens of workers in Google's news division received word this week that they were losing their jobs, according to a report.

4. Another Round Of Layoffs At Google: Google News Workers Get Pink Slips | Companies News, Times Now

   Tech Layoffs 2023: Google has pared down its workforce, this time in the Google News division, laying off approximately 40 individuals