Tootfinder

UK CMA designates Google with "strategic market status" in online search and advertising and will begin consultation on potential new regulations later in 2025 (Charlotte Tobitt/Press Gazette)
https://pressgazette.co.uk/news/google

Google search, AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover designated for UK regulation
Google search has formally been designated with "strategic market status" by the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).

lastfm_aminer: Last.fm social graph
This network contains the social graph of last.fm, a site that provides a streaming radio service, where users can search music and get personalized recommendation. A directed edge (i,j) means that user i follows user j.
This network has 136409 nodes and 1685524 edges.
Tags: Social, Online, Unweighted

Source: Perplexity has secured commitments from investors for $200M in new funding at a $20B valuation (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/perplexity-finalizes-20-billion-valuation-round

Perplexity Finalizes $20 Billion-Valuation Round 
Perplexity, which runs an artificial intelligence-powered search engine, has secured commitments from investors for $200 million in new funding at a $20 billion valuation, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. The new capital comes less than two months after the three-year-old startup raised money at a $18 billion valuation. The frequent but relatively modest financings, at

So fun! Some where I have a similar graphic where I chart when I joined each network.

Thanks @… for the call-out on @… 🙇‍♂️ - "We Distribute Live — Sean Tilley — FediCon 2025"

They make explosives. Not to be conspiracy-theorist, but we keep having manufacturing plants blow up...
‘Multiple people’ dead after explosion at Tennessee plant as crews search rubble for missing workers | The Independent
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/explosion-bucksnort-tennessee-plant-death-toll-b2843396.html

I've noticed a lot of sites with popups and nagware are now blocking my view of said site because I've opted not to view their ads (through Firefox settings and private DNS). This is really irritating on the phone because the nagware takes up virtually all of the screen. However, once again RemovePaywall comes to the rescue. Just pop that pesky url into RP's search bar and voila...

People CEO Neil Vogel calls Google a "bad actor" for refusing to pay publishers for AI content and says Google Search drives 25%-30% of visits to People sites (Jeff John Roberts/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2025/09/11/media-in…

Google’s AI is the ‘worst’ for stealing content, says People CEO
But Google-owned YouTube could provide a model for media and AI to coexist and thrive, says internet industry pioneer Bill Gross.

for all your solo robert hunter setlist & tape needs, douglas aldridge just updated/relaunched his long-dormant hunterbase. http://stillunsung.com

Robert Hunter Performance Archive
Comprehensive documentation of 600+ Robert Hunter performances spanning his complete musical career. Search setlists, venues, and recordings from the Grateful Dead lyricist's solo work and collaborations.

To prevent users from unwittingly exposing sensitive information
OpenAI has removed the option to make ChatGPT interactions indexable by search engines
The feature rollback follows reports of ChatGPT conversations being discoverable in search results,
an option recently extended to ChatGPT users.
Dane Stuckey, CISO of OpenAI, announced the change in a social media post.
He described it as a short-lived experiment to help people discover useful conversations.

OpenAI removes ChatGPT self-doxing option
: Checkbox to make chatbot conversations appear in search engines deemed a footgun

Color me confused - I see that el cheeto's dog, Lindsey Halligan, is listed as a lawyer in Virginia.
Yet, when go to the Virginia bar website and search for her in their lists of Virginia attorneys I get zero hits.
Huh?
The page below says that she is a member of the Virginia Bar, but the Virginia Bar seems not to know who she is?
Am I fat fingering something on the Virginia bar's attorney search site?

Lindsey Halligan - Civil Rights, Criminal Defense Lawyer | Lexinter Law Directory
Lindsey Halligan, attorney and political appointee, became Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia in 2025 under Donald Trump.

At Berlin Buzzwords 2025, Nomin-Erdene Oyun and Shikhar Srivastava discussed how they built a high-throughput telemetry system to stream, store, and search a large amount of data from scratch using open source technologies such as ZeroMQ, Apache Kafka, Kubernetes, and Apache Cassandra, sharing valuable insights into the system’s design and performance, as well as lessons learned along the way.
Watch the full session: #bbuzz 2026: https://tickets.plainschwarz.com/bbuzz26/c/8Hvk0ZvJA/

UK CMA designates Google with "strategic market status" in online search, but excludes Gemini; Google says potential interventions could slow product launches (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/8cc9b094-698d-41d8-8399-b10dc3e57e70

#AIForensics' study (07/2025) reveals how AI-generated content floods #TikTok & #Instagram, with platforms failing to adequately label synthetic material.
>

AI Generated Algorithmic Virality
This investigation systematically analyzes AI-generated content across TikTok and Instagram in three European countries. We found that 25% of TikTok's top search results contain synthetic AI imagery, with over 80% produced by "Agentic AI Accounts." Despite platforms' DSA commitments, only half of AI content receives proper labeling, creating significant risks for users.

.@rose.bsky.team: „People are talking about Bluesky! From data analyzed between Jan 1 — Aug 18, 2025, we captured 85.5% of share of voice across social, digital, and traditional media, according to Meltwater. This is what death looks like 💀“

OK, I spent like an hour driving myself insane yesterday trying to find a copy of “what goes around comes around” by Bob Marley & The Wailers to buy/download and NOTHING would show it to me.
HOWEVER, all the search engines really want me to know that fucking Justin Timberlake has a song named that🤮

mist: MIST protein interaction database (2020)
The Molecular Interaction Search Tool (MIST) is a comprehensive resource of molecular interactions, assembled from severla primary sources. MIST currently supports several species, including:.
This network has 27105 nodes and 334495 edges.
Tags: Biological, Protein interactions, Unweighted

Sistrix: among the 10 UK news sites with the highest search visibility scores, six saw double-digit percentage drops in Google search visibility since January (Charlotte Tobitt/Press Gazette)
https://pressgazette.co.uk/media-audie

Most leading UK news websites fell down Google rankings in 2025
Around six in ten of the UK’s biggest news websites have seen a drop in their visibility in Google search results in 2025 so far.

Circle to Search kann jetzt beim Scrollen übersetzen
Google erweitert den Funktionsumfang von Circle to Search. Die smarte Suchfunktion kann jetzt ganze Webseiten und Apps fließend übersetzen.
https://www.

ChatGPT Connectors 0click Attack https://labs.zenity.io/p/agentflayer-chatgpt-connectors-0click-attack-5b41 that's why I don't like the idea of connecting any of my services to any of my other services. Convenience has costs.

"I just want my life back!"
New from Chuck Tingle. This Summer don't stray too far from the standards track, lest you be…
Pounded in the Ass By the RFC Process
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/dane/JPY1_4_KFznrh_sAPUvQc2ig9Cs/

In which Sak Supple shares his experiments with using LLMs to transcribe 18th and 19th century playbills from the British Library - manicules, long 's' and all! 'blplaybills.org: better search results using LLMs' https://www.bl.uk/stories/blogs/posts/blpl

blplaybills.org: better search results using LLMs
Search for, view and download 300 years of theatre posters from Great Britain and Ireland, 1600–1902.

Day eight of my road trip and a driving day from Nullabor Roadhouse, SA to Cocklebiddy Roadhouse, WA. Had to go through the quarantine search at the border. Great sunrise over the Nullabor weather station. #RoadTrip

Google is the first company to be designated with special status in the UK under new digital laws; the designation does not introduce any immediate requirements (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boa

"What works in #India will scale better everywhere else. Naturally, the country is a battleground for #AI search."
This is fishing for data and the next #enshittification to roll ou…

"Why I Think Academic Deep Research — or at Least Deep Search — Will “Win”" by @…: https://aarontay.substack.com/p/why-i-think-academic-d…

Just finished "Lulu and Milagro's Search for Clarity" by Angela Velez. It's an excellent #OwnVoices Latinx teen drama about big questions like dating and college, and it's very well plotted, with lots of balls in the air that get caught and thrown again beautifully and which all come down nicely at the end. Reminded me of "Far From the Tree" by Robin Benway, which also had three siblings and which also juggled dramatic irony beautifully across multiple perspectives. A less skilled author could have told a similar story with more straightforward perspective trading, but Velez manages to create a lovely relay race of tensions that pass their batons to each other so neatly you're always eagerly awaiting the next development.
#AmReading

Is this for real? You can't block #Copilot from creating issues and pull requests in your #Github repositories? That seems too wild even for Microsoft..
Quoting @…

Echo Chambers and Information Brokers on Truth Social: A Study of Network Dynamics and Political Discourse
Emelia May Hughes, Tim Weninger
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.08676 https…

Echo Chambers and Information Brokers on Truth Social: A Study of Network Dynamics and Political Discourse
This study examines the structural dynamics of Truth Social, a politically aligned social media platform, during two major political events: the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade and the FBI's search of Mar-a-Lago. Using a large-scale dataset of user interactions based on re-truths (platform-native reposts), we analyze how the network evolves in relation to fragmentation, polarization, and user influence. Our findings reveal a segmented and ideologically homogenous structure domin…

Dumping Google’s enshittified search for Kagi - Ars Technica https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/08/enough-is-enough-i-dumped-googles-worsening-search-for-kagi/

Enough is enough—I dumped Google’s worsening search for Kagi
Enough is enough: I’ve jettisoned Google in favor of a search engine that doesn’t treat me like a product.

Wenn man den LibGen Datensatz durchsucht, den OpenAI, Meta, Anthropic usw. verwendet haben, gibt es wohl wenig, was sie nicht verfüttert haben (https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/03/search-libgen-data-set/682094/).

Perplexity Head of Publisher Partnerships Jessica Chan says it isn't "taking any new advertisers", and that ads aren't currently planned for AI browser Comet (Trishla Ostwal/Adweek)
https://www.adweek.com/media/perplexity-pauses-n…

Perplexity Pauses New Advertising Deals to Reassess Ambitions
The move highlights the AI search startup's monetization challenges.

#PamelaAnderson #TraciBingham #DavidChokachi
Season 7 Episode 10 "Search and Rescue"

Goddamit YouTube I just want some 1980s punk music!

"Worldwide #search #traffic has fallen by 15 percent in the past year [...] The culprit: AI search. Now that #AI-generated summaries are being integrated into search results, anyone looking for informati…

Ich hatte vorhin mal die Idee, im @… nach »Büromaschinen« zu suchen. Es tat sich eine technikgeschichtliche Goldgrube auf: https://archive.org/search?query=bürom

🌝 Reverse engineering the mysterious Up-Data Link Test Set from Apollo
http://www.righto.com/2025/07/reverse-engineering-mysterious-up-data.html
#electronics

Reverse engineering the mysterious Up-Data Link Test Set from Apollo
Back in 2021, a collector friend of ours was visiting a dusty warehouse in search of Apollo-era communications equipment. A box with NASA-st...

mist: MIST protein interaction database (2020)
The Molecular Interaction Search Tool (MIST) is a comprehensive resource of molecular interactions, assembled from severla primary sources. MIST currently supports several species, including:.
This network has 46404 nodes and 643319 edges.
Tags: Biological, Protein interactions, Unweighted

The next time some know-it-all informs you that The Slippery Slope Is A Fallacy, just remember that it only took a generation for the UK to slide from the heights of Monty Python to Ofcom wanting to ban SpongeBob clips to protect the children

An der Spotify-API gescheitert. Ich wollte Playlists abrufen, die einen bestimmten Song enthalten. Info hat Spotify und stellt sie Künstler*innen zur Verfügung. Aber nur denen. Gibt ein paar Services, die versuchen es zu machen (https://www.chosic.com/spotify-playlist-search…

…aber ein Search Index, der spezialisiert ist für LLMs und generative AI. 🤦🏽
https://mstdn.party/@ferreiros/114982088596257343

Joseph documented our new Command Palette:
https://blog.xogot.com/xogots-new-command-palette/
Video, but I would turn down the volume - because we are not really music-compatible:

Xogot's New Command Palette
Inspired by macOS Spotlight and the Command Palette in VSCode, Xogot's new Command Palette offers a better way to navigate and search your projects and makes using Xogot faster, smoother, and more powerful than ever.

Hmmm, well my migration script seems to be working, but it's showing all public replies in the view.
Not sure if that's due to the destination server not having the full conversation, a change between default and Glitch, or a bug in my script, but I guess it works?...
My concept; query the source server (via a public / anonymous connection) to retrieve all posts for a target user, then on the destination server perform a search of each post URL so it's available in th…

I guess it's a good first step https://toot.cafe/@tomayac/115309411832537447
But I've also been waiting for *years* (`prefers-color-scheme` was introduced in 2019), for:
- light/dark-mode `theme_color`
- light/dark-mode `background_color`
- light-dark-mode `ic…

@… "Search timeline" is very easy to open but limited, while the full-site search is buried much deeper.
Have you considered connecting these two UIs? e.g. suggest expanding to the big search if nothing is found in the timeline.
Or at least recognize any post URL pasted into the timeline search box to open the post, since that's a weird mast…

OMG, don't torture me like this!
The email I thought was dead has risen from the dead!
Will I finally be able to play Ruggothrikh again?
Here's my guild...
I mean the most recent guild....
https://albiononlinetools.com/player/g

Mastodon Fediverse Game Power's guild profile - Albion Online Tools
Mastodon Fediverse Game Power's guild profile - Find Albion Online Players & Guilds in all servers. Search by Player or Guild. Discover Player & Guilds profiles and build your network.

Google says total organic click volume from Search to websites has been "relatively stable" YoY and it's sending "slightly more quality clicks" than a year ago (Liz Reid/The Keyword)
https://blog.google/products/search/ai-sear…

AI in Search is driving more queries and higher quality clicks
We continue to send billions of clicks to the web every day and are committed to prioritizing the web in our AI experiences in Search.

> All of this is also happening since Google removed support for the ClaimReview standard— a data format that was designed to ensure that this kind of confusion did not happen.
https://fullfact.org/technology/google-search-is-vandalising-the-internet-h…

Google Search is vandalising the internet. Here’s how. – Full Fact
Google Search is misrepresenting our fact checks, showing incorrect information to millions.

Cool little adapted tale on AI, by Alison Gopnik:
https://simons.berkeley.edu/news/stone-soup-ai

Stone Soup AI
For some time, I’ve argued that a common conception of AI is misguided. This is the idea that AI systems like large language and vision models are individual intelligent agents, analogous to human agents. Instead, I’ve argued that these models are “cultural technologies” like writing, print, pictures, libraries, internet search engines, and Wikipedia.

"Why embedding vector search is probably one of the least objectionable use of AI for search" by Aaron Tay:
https://aarontay.substack.com/p/why-embedding-vector-search-is-probably

Truth Social launches a Perplexity-powered AI search feature that consistently references Trump-supporting media including Fox News and The Washington Times (Jess Weatherbed/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/753863/trump-truth-social-ai-s…

Truth Social’s new AI search engine basically just pushes Fox News
Donald Trump’s media company is beta-testing a new AI search feature on Truth Social that’s seemingly biased towards conservative media sources.

In a September 5 filing in the US v. Google ad tech trial, Google said "the open web is already in rapid decline", contradicting Google's recent statements (Barry Schwartz/Search Engine Roundtable)
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-open-web-is-in-r…

New Google Court Doc: Open Web Is In Rapid Decline
Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, said in May that web publishing is not dying. Nick Fox, VP of Search at Google, said in May that the web is thriving. But in a court document filed by Google on late Fri

lastfm_aminer: Last.fm social graph
This network contains the social graph of last.fm, a site that provides a streaming radio service, where users can search music and get personalized recommendation. A directed edge (i,j) means that user i follows user j.
This network has 136409 nodes and 1685524 edges.
Tags: Social, Online, Unweighted

With a little experience, it's easy to identify website search queries that don't work. In this session, @… used live examples from several high-profile websites to demonstrate how to effectively break search. He explained what is meant by 'broken' search, the different types of failure and what these problems reveal about the underlying search…

Meta updates Reels on Facebook to prioritize showing fresher and more-relevant content, and adds AI search suggestions and friend bubbles like on Instagram (Katelyn Chedraoui/CNET)
https://www.cnet.com/news/social-media/fac

Facebook's Algorithm Update Aims to Show You Newer Reels You'll Actually Like, Even if It's AI
Facebook's vice president of product, Jagjit Chawla, talks about how the platform treats AI-generated content and how you can see less of it.

Ring-Kameras: Suche in Videoaufzeichnungen nun für deutsche Kunden verfügbar
Das "Ring Smart Video Search"genannte Feature soll dank KI Ereignisse mittels einfacher Texteingabe finden.

"I suppose it will take time, but if XLibre carries the FOSS X server torch moving forward, folks will likely want it for these technical reasons."
Yep my completely reasonable just-asking-questions brother in FOSS, those folks sure do want to carry some torches, you got that right.
(car crash at <h…

Google says total organic click volume from Search to websites has been "relatively stable" YoY and it's sending "slightly more quality clicks" than a year ago (Liz Reid/The Keyword)
https://blog.google/products/search/ai-sear…

AI in Search is driving more queries and higher quality clicks
We continue to send billions of clicks to the web every day and are committed to prioritizing the web in our AI experiences in Search.

The nightmare of the #Google case,
"As punishment for being convinced of obtaining and maintaining a monopoly, Google will be forced to share sensitive data with lots of other search engines. This will not secure competition for search, but it will certainly democratize human rights violations at scale."

In a September 5 filing in the US v. Google ad tech trial, Google said "the open web is already in rapid decline", contradicting Google's recent statements (Barry Schwartz/Search Engine Roundtable)
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-open-web-is-in-r…

New Google Court Doc: Open Web Is In Rapid Decline
Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, said in May that web publishing is not dying. Nick Fox, VP of Search at Google, said in May that the web is thriving. But in a court document filed by Google on late Fri

GPT-5 Thinking in ChatGPT is shockingly good at search and demonstrates the potential of combining tool calling with chain-of-thought reasoning (Simon Willison/Simon Willison's Weblog)
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Sep/6/research-goblin/

GPT-5 Thinking in ChatGPT (aka Research Goblin) is shockingly good at search
“Don’t use chatbots as search engines” was great advice for several years... until it wasn’t. I wrote about how good OpenAI’s o3 was at using its Bing-backed search tool back …

trec_web: TREC WT10g (2003)
A web graph network originally constructed in 2003 as a testbed for information-retrieval techniques, including web search engines. Distributed by University of Glasgow.
This network has 1601787 nodes and 8063026 edges.
Tags: Informational, Web graph, Unweighted
https://networks.skewed.de/net…

ProRata.ai, which lets publishers embed custom AI search on their sites with a 50/50 revenue share, raised a $40M Series B, bringing its total raised to $70M (Kerry Flynn/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2025/09/05/prorata-ai-search-tool-publishers

Exclusive: ProRata.ai raises $40M and launches new search tool for publishers
The new product provides publishers custom AI search on their sites.

Analysis: Google Search favored global news brands like CNN and Al Jazeera over Manchester Evening News coverage, following an attack on a Manchester synagogue (Charlotte Tobitt/Press Gazette)
https://pressgazette.co.uk/news/google-manchester-visibility-s/

Google appears to prioritise global newsbrands over local ones for breaking news events
Global newsbrands were being surfaced more highly in Google than the biggest local news operation in Manchester for synagogue attack story.

"The AI powered Library Search That Refused to Search"
https://aarontay.substack.com/p/the-ai-powered-library-search-that

cora: CORA citations (1998)
Citations among papers indexed by CORA, from 1998, an early computer science research paper search engine. If a paper i cites a paper j also in this data set, then a directed edge connects i to j. (Papers not in the data set are excluded.) Self-loops may be present. The dates of these snapshots are uncertain.
This network has 23166 nodes and 91500 edges.
Tags: Informational, Citation, Unweighted

ProRata.ai, which lets publishers embed custom AI search on their sites with a 50/50 revenue share, raised a $40M Series B, bringing its total raised to $75M (Kerry Flynn/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2025/09/05/prorata-ai-search-tool-publishers

Exclusive: ProRata.ai raises $40M and launches new search tool for publishers
The new product provides publishers custom AI search on their sites.

A look at OpenAI's search for the sites of its Stargate data centers in the US; OpenAI has received 800 applications since January and has 20 finalist sites (MacKenzie Sigalos/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/05/openai-stargate…

This Meta alum has spent 10 months leading OpenAI's nationwide hunt for its Stargate data centers
OpenAI's effort to build a massive industrial base to power the future of artificial intelligence is being led by Keith Heyde.

YouTube launches the Activation Partners program to connect advertisers and agencies with a curated network of experts specializing in YouTube campaigns (Anu Adegbola/Search Engine Land)
https://searchengineland.com/youtube-activation-partners-program-463025

YouTube launches Activation Partners program
YouTube’s new program links advertisers and agencies with vetted third-party experts in media buying and campaign management.

In US v. Google, a judge rejects prosecutors' bid to make Google sell off Chrome but says Google is barred from exclusive contracts and must share search data (Jennifer Elias/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/02/google-antitrust-search-ruling.html

Google stock jumps 8% after search giant avoids worst-case penalties in antitrust case
The ruling comes nearly a year after a U.S. judge ruled that Google holds an illegal monopoly in its core market of internet search.

Instacart integrates its retail data with TikTok Ads Manager, letting consumer packaged goods advertisers target audiences and measure conversions within TikTok (Anu Adegbola/Search Engine Land)
https://searchengineland.com/instacart-tiktok-ads-manager-463072

Instacart brings retail media targeting to TikTok Ads Manager
The partnership lets CPG advertisers use Instacart’s retail data to target high-intent shoppers and track purchases directly within TikTok.

lastfm_aminer: Last.fm social graph
This network contains the social graph of last.fm, a site that provides a streaming radio service, where users can search music and get personalized recommendation. A directed edge (i,j) means that user i follows user j.
This network has 136409 nodes and 1685524 edges.
Tags: Social, Online, Unweighted

Reddit wants to become "a go-to search engine" for users; its core search has 70M weekly active unique users and AI-powered Reddit Answers has 6M weekly users (Jay Peters/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/717095/reddit-q2-2025-earnings-search-engi…

Reddit wants to be a search engine now
Reddit is putting effort into making its platform a “go-to search engine,” CEO Steve Huffman says in a note to investors.

SB Nation redesigns its websites to include community content, part of Vox's broader strategy to recapture engagement and counter AI's impact on search traffic (Sara Fischer/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2025/08/05/sb-nation-redesign-vox-media

SB Nation redesigns sites as Vox Media readies for Google Zero
The redesign is meant to help the brand recapture engagement that occurs on external social media feeds instead of its sites.

The US v. Google ruling signals a cautious antitrust approach by courts and a reluctance to intervene too deeply, ahead of other Big Tech antitrust rulings (Steve Lohr/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/03/technology/google-ruling-antitrust.html…

Google Search Monopoly Ruling Sends Signal for Big-Tech Antitrust Cases
A federal judge ordered steps in the search monopoly case that will restrain Google but not break it up, signaling a cautious antitrust approach by courts.

Ad tech company Ad.com acquires Public Good to help with development of a search engine, Search.com, which will offer cash-back rewards and other perks (Matthew Keys/TheDesk.net)
https://thedesk.net/2025/08/public-good-search-dot-com/

How researchers at Microsoft, IBM, and other organizations are using AI to speed up the search for new materials and chemicals for batteries (Andrew Moseman/IEEE Spectrum)
https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-battery-material

AI Drives Battery Innovation at Microsoft, IBM
What if AI could find the perfect battery material in hours, not years? Discover the latest advancements.

In US v. Google, a judge rejects prosecutors' bid to make Google sell off Chrome but says Google is barred from exclusive contracts and must share search data (Jennifer Elias/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/02/google-antitrust-search-ruling.html

Google stock jumps 8% after search giant avoids worst-case penalties in antitrust case
The ruling comes nearly a year after a U.S. judge ruled that Google holds an illegal monopoly in its core market of internet search.

SEO is being supplanted by generative-engine optimization, or GEO, which focuses on AI chatbots and does not benefit from longstanding SEO tricks (John Herrman/New York Magazine)
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/seo-is-dead-say-hello-to-geo.html

SEO Is Dead. Say Hello to GEO.
Search-engine optimization now feels dated. Generative-engine optimization is all about trying to trick AI chatbots, writes John Herrman.

Google agrees with two power utilities to pause non-essential AI workloads during peak demand or adverse weather events that reduce supply (Tobias Mann/The Register)
https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/04/google_ai_datacenter_grid/

Google agrees to pause AI workloads to protect the grid when power demand spikes
: On hot summer days, air conditioning is rather more important than search summaries

Reddit wants to become "a go-to search engine" for users; its core search has 70M weekly active unique users and AI-powered Reddit Answers has 6M weekly users (Jay Peters/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/717095/reddit-q2-2025-earnings-search-engi…

Reddit wants to be a search engine now
Reddit is putting effort into making its platform a “go-to search engine,” CEO Steve Huffman says in a note to investors.

OpenAI removes a ChatGPT feature that let users make their conversations discoverable by Google and other search engines, calling it a "short-lived experiment" (Amanda Silberling/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/31/your

Your public ChatGPT queries are getting indexed by Google and other search engines | TechCrunch
Search engines are indexing links to ChatGPT conversations that have been made sharable with a link.

SEO is being supplanted by generative-engine optimization, or GEO, which focuses on AI chatbots and does not benefit from longstanding SEO tricks (John Herrman/New York Magazine)
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/seo-is-dead-say-hello-to-geo.html

SEO Is Dead. Say Hello to GEO.
Search-engine optimization now feels dated. Generative-engine optimization is all about trying to trick AI chatbots, writes John Herrman.

Google begins rolling out new AI Mode features: Search Live with video, Canvas for planning, and PDF upload, plus AI Mode in Google Lens in desktop Chrome (Abner Li/9to5Google)
https://9to5google.com/2025/07/29/google-ai-mode-search-live-video-canvas/

Google AI Mode adding Search Live video, Canvas, PDF upload, and more
Google is updating AI Mode with four big features across Search Live (video with Google Lens), Canvas, and more.

Some ad industry executives express anger and disappointment at the US v. Google ruling, and say it will do little to alter Google's dominance of the ad market (Ronan Shields/Digiday)
https://digiday.com/media-buying/angry

Angry and disappointed, if not surprised: The ad industry reacts to the Google search remedies ruling 
The industry reacts to the ruling that Google will not have to divest Android or Chrome in latest antitrust development

Google updates AI Mode to make searching through images using vague descriptions easier and says the tool will "provide a relevant set of shoppable options" (Jess Weatherbed/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/788180/google-ai-mode-visual-sear…

Google’s AI Mode image search is getting more conversational
Google’s latest AI Mode update makes it easier for users to search through images using vague descriptions and references.

Midi, which offers virtual care for women and is developing an AI search engine for health info, raised a $50M Series C, bringing its total funding to ~$150M (Rebecca Torrence/Business Insider)
https://www.businessinsider.com/womens-health-st…

Midi Health raises $50 million in funding as the menopause startup bets on longevity and AI
Midi's Series C raise comes as the startup's menopause care business surges. The company is now posting a $150 million revenue run rate.

DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg, Senator Amy Klobuchar, News / Media Alliance CEO Danielle Coffey, and others criticize the US v. Google ruling as too lenient (Jay Peters/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/769738/google-doj-antitrust-remedies-ruling-cr…

Google critics think the search remedies ruling is a total whiff
Google critics aren’t happy with the remedies ruling handed down in the Department of Justice’s antitrust case against the company.

The ruling that allows Google to continue paying for traffic acquisition is a huge win for Apple and for Mozilla, which relies heavily on payments from Google (M.G. Siegler/Spyglass)
https://spyglass.org/google-apple-and-mozilla-win-in-the-antitrust-case-…

Google, Apple, and Mozilla Win in the Antitrust Case Google Lost
Chrome stays. Payments stay. Exclusive placement goes. Some Search data goes.

DMG Media, Guardian Media Group, and other UK publishers call for the CMA to include Gemini in its investigation into Google's search and search ads dominance (Alice Brooker/Press Gazette)
https://pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/publ…

Publishers call for CMA to include Gemini in Google investigation
Publishers have responded to the UK's competition watchdog (CMA)'s investigation on Google's market dominance.

Sources: Apple plans an AI search tool, World Knowledge Answers, for spring 2026 as part of a Siri revamp; Apple and Google plan to test a Google model for Siri (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

You.com, which pivoted from AI search to enterprise AI tools, raised $100M led by Cox Enterprises at a $1.5B valuation, after a $50M Series B in September 2024 (Paayal Zaveri/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

AI search engine startup Exa Labs raised an $85M Series B led by Benchmark at a $700M valuation, up 10x on its 2024 Series A, and plans to grow its GPU cluster (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-03/…

Wikimedia Deutschland launches the Wikidata Embedding Project, a vector-based semantic search database with nearly 120M entries, to make data accessible to AI (Russell Brandom/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/01/new-project-makes-wikipedia-…

New project makes Wikipedia data more accessible to AI | TechCrunch
A new database will make Wikipedia's wealth of knowledge more accessible to AI models.

Google launches Web Guide, an AI-powered Search Labs experiment that organizes Google Search results by grouping pages related to specific aspects of the query (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/24/googles-new-web-view-…

Google's new Web View search experiment organizes results with AI | TechCrunch
Google's new Search Labs experiment will organize the search results using AI smarts.

Brave says it has surpassed 100M monthly active users across desktop and mobile worldwide, with 42M DAUs, and Brave Search handles 1.6B queries each month (Paul Thurrott/Thurrott)
https://www.thurrott.com/cloud/web-browsers/327735/brave-now-has-over-…

Brave Now Has Over 100 Million Users
Brave announced today that it now has over 100 million active users across desktop and mobile worldwide.

Sources: Apple formed an Answers, Knowledge, and Information team to work on ChatGPT-like search experiences; iPhone 17 Pro may have been seen in live testing (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters

Q&A with Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince on why he thinks AI chatbots imperil the web and journalism's future, his company's pay-per-crawl initiative, and more (Fred Vogelstein/Crazy Stupid Tech)
https://crazystupidtech.com/2025/08/30…

Cloudflare's Matthew Prince has a plan to get Google and the AI oliigarchs to pay for your content even though many are used to getting it for free. He might have enough leverage to make them.
AI chatbots are blowing up the 30-year economic relationship publishers have had with search engines. Many think this will kill the web if not addressed. Google needs to change first. It's resisting. Cloudflare's Matthew Prince is going to try and make them.

Google launches its Search Live feature in the US, letting users ask questions in AI Mode while sharing their phone's camera feed for real-time help (Sabrina Ortiz/ZDNET)
https://www.zdnet.com/article/you-can-search-live-video-with-google-now-heres-how/…

You can Search live video with Google now - here's how
With Search Live, you can ask Gemini anything about the world around you in real-time.

Google will roll out AI Mode in the UK in the coming days after launching in the US and India; the optional feature will appear as a tab and in the search box (Zoe Kleinman/BBC)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyj4zky4zwo

Google launches new 'AI mode' search feature in UK
The new tool marks a significant change for the search giant but raises questions for advertisers.