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There is so much fresh uncertainty following Google I/O, and I think it will take us all a while to process it and understand what it means. vale.rocks/micros/20260...

To play devil's advocate: this could be the end for a majority of ad-supported content websites, but many of these sites didn't offer a great experience to begin with. Maybe that means that the websites who survive are the ones who are directly supported by their community?

Ad-supported websites aren't all bad, and many are rather valuable. To even lose a few of the good ones is terrible. Separately, this change will harm content discoverability by reducing the number of visitors (who might have supported them), negating the community support vector.

I mean, I mostly agree, but at the same time I don't want to over-value the current system just because it's the one I'm used to (and the one I benefit from). So I'm trying to keep an open mind.

I think the optimistic case is more something along the lines of e.g. someone opening a restaurant, and that restaurant being actively pushed to users because Google knows it matches their taste, without the owner having to worry about SEO or advertising

So I'm not really saying it'll be good for websites, but it *might* be good for products, events, creators, etc. by offering them a more direct connection to users. Again that's me trying to be optimistic about it though, if it were up to me I would not risk blowing up the current system…