Internet Policy/Net Reality: You Must Never Ever Rely on Google (no "S.E.O." Either)
Also, it's not about quantity/density of words, nor does/should the number of pages matter; the amount makes no difference when abundance can just turn out to be worthless slop and time-wasting
So Microsoft Tim has just [1] mentioned that Stack Overflow's traffic collapsed. The site is connected to Microsoft (its roots) and outsourced to it [2] (they mention "Azure"). Microsoft Tim wrote this in a sister site of his employer, The Register MS (managed by Microsofters). He said "[o]nly 3,862 questions were posted in December" whereas "[a]t its peak in early 2014, Stack Overflow received more than 200,000 questions per month."
Stack Overflow's "Saying goodbye to the servers at our physical datacenter" [2] can be interpreted as yet more layoffs, shutdowns, and other cuts (offloading what's left to "the clown" where lesser-skilled - i.e. cheaper - staff can keep things running, even if hosting bills surge).
Put another way, Stack Overflow is dying. They've suffered considerable brain drain [3] and profound identity crisis [4], for they don't compete with slop but with something even worse. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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Dramatic drop in Stack Overflow questions as devs look elsewhere for help [Ed: Just an overhyped forum all along; Stack Overflow was very heavily dependent on Google Search referrals, but now Google is just plagiarising other people's work with P.I.S.S., then presenting that as "AI" and "Google"]
Stack Overflow, long the go-to resource for developers seeking coding help, saw its question volume plummet further in 2025. Only 3,862 questions were posted in December – a 78 percent drop from the previous year.
At its peak in early 2014, Stack Overflow received more than 200,000 questions per month.
The shift is clear: developers now turn to AI tools directly within their IDEs, bypassing both the hassle of forum posts and the risk of dismissive moderators. That second factor matters more than many realize as discussions of Stack Overflow’s decline invariably surface stories of hostile treatment. Responding to the recent statistics, one developer put it bluntly: “AI certainly accelerated the decline, but this is the result of consistently punishing users for trying to participate in your community. People were just happy to finally have a tool that didn’t tell them their questions were stupid.”
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Stack Overflow ☛ The Great Unracking: Saying goodbye to the servers at our physical datacenter
For almost our entire 16-year existence, the SRE team has managed all datacenter operations, including the physical servers, cabling, racking, replacing failed disks and everything else in between. This work required someone to physically show up at the datacenter and poke the machines.
We’ve since moved all our sites to the cloud. Our servers are now cattle, not pets. Nobody is going to have to drive to our New Jersey data center and replace or reboot hardware. Not after last week.
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Stack Overflow cuts 28% of its staff
In a blog post, Stack Overflow’s CEO, Prashanth Chandrasekar indicated that the company is focusing on its path to profitability. While the post didn’t elaborate on the reason behind the job cuts, it mentioned customers’ budgets shifting elsewhere “due to the macroeconomic pressures.”
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Why 89% of Developers Are Abandoning Stack Overflow in 2025 (The Shocking Truth Inside)
Discord communities, Slack groups, and Reddit threads now feel more approachable and up-to-date, fostering real-time conversations that Stack Overflow simply can’t match.