The Shitification of Google

Paul Myers (BBC Verify) and me, Henk van Ess sat down in London to discuss a pressing issue: the shitification of Google. Yes, that’s right—Google has slowly been losing its touch. But hold on—Paul wants me to clarify that these are his own spicy hot takes, and in no way represent the fine, polished opinions of the BBC! Shitification—yes, that’s a thing now! It’s the slow, painful, infuriating decline of services we once loved and depended on, now reduced to hollow shells of their former glory. Enter: Google. First, they murdered Google Cache. Once upon a time, you could view a saved copy of a website that’s vanished from the web. And now? That magical button has gone to the place where hopes and dreams die. Why? Because Google said, “You don’t need it, darling!” But wait, it gets worse. How many search results do you get now? 300. Yes, just 300 out of possibly millions! So unless you’re looking for Disney’s Mickey Mouse, your obscure little website is living in Google’s black hole, probably with those old Yahoo! email accounts we all forgot about. And don’t even get us started on reverse image search. Once a glorious feature, now bastardized by Google Lens, which, let’s be honest, is just a glorified game of “What’s that blurry thing in your photo?” It’s useful for identifying dog breeds, but can be terrible for hardcore OSINT researchers like us who want to verify images based on sites and dates. Google is a bit like a high-end coffee shop that suddenly decided to serve instant. You still go there, but you’re deeply disappointed. Shitification has arrived, folks, and Google’s the poster child. Paul and me discuss possible solutions. Enjoy! Get full access to Digital Digging with Henk van Ess at www.digitaldigging.org/subscribe