Google, I Did Not Ask for Your Opinion — A 60-year-old finds AI Mode annoying

— I just wanted the links. Now Google keeps telling me what to think.

I am 60. I use Google every day. Something is bothering me.

Every morning, I open my phone. I type a question into Google. For maybe thirty years now, this is what I do. Used to be simple. You type, you get a list of blue links, you pick one, you read.

Now, something else happens. A big block of text appears at the top. Google has already decided what the answer is. The links — the real links, the ones I came for — are pushed way down. I have to scroll past Google explaining things to me before I can see what other people wrote.

I am told this is called “AI Mode.” Or sometimes “AI Overviews.” I cannot keep the names straight, and I am not sure Google can either.

AI Mode is in the way. I just want the links.

Here is the part that frustrates me. On my phone screen, the AI summary now takes up most of the view. Sometimes the whole first screen. I have to scroll down two, three times before I see any actual websites.

Apparently I am not alone. People are searching for “AI Mode annoying” and “how to turn off Google AI” and “AI Overviews disable.” That tells you something. If your new feature creates a search trend of people trying to escape from it, that is a sign.

I do not want a summary. I want sources. I want to choose which website to read. The whole point of Google, for me, was that it was a door to other peoples writing — doctors, journalists, regular folks with blogs like this one. Now Google is standing in the doorway, giving me a speech, before letting me through.

Google, I did not ask for your opinion

Here is what I want to say plainly: I asked a question. I did not ask what you think.

When I search for something, I am trying to gather information so I can form my own opinion. That is the whole point. If I wanted somebody else to tell me what the answer is, I would call my brother.

An AI summary at the top of the page is the opposite of what a search engine used to be. A search engine was a finder. It pointed at things. Now it has become a teller. It points at itself.

And here is the thing — I do not even trust the summary. It is built from scraping other peoples websites, then rewording it without saying where each piece came from. If I want to know who actually said what, I have to scroll past the summary anyway. So the AI just added work to my day.

Brand confusion: Google, Gemini, AI Mode, AI Overviews

This is the other problem. Google has too many names for what it does now, and none of them stick in my head.

• Is it “Google AI”?
• “Gemini” — that is the chatbot, right?
• “AI Mode” — is that the same thing or a different button?
• “AI Overviews” — that is the summary at the top, I think.
• “Bard” — wait, is that still a thing or did they rename it?

I can remember “ChatGPT.” That is one name, one product, one verb people use (“I ChatGPTed it”). But for Google, I cannot tell you which name goes with which feature. And I have been online since the early 2000s. If I am confused, what about people younger than me who never learned to care?

“Google it” was the cleanest verb in tech. One word. Everyone knew what it meant. Google spent twenty years building that. Now they are scattering it across five product names, and asking us all to keep up.

My proposal: AskGle, TalkGle, LongGle

Since Google clearly cannot decide on a name, let me, a 60-year-old from Japan with no marketing degree, do their job for them.

• AskGle — Ask + Google. For when you have a question. “Just AskGle it.” Easy to verb-ify, like Google itself.
• TalkGle — Talk + Google. For the chat thing where you keep going back and forth. “I TalkGled with it for an hour.”
• LongGle — Long + Google. For when your question is a paragraph long. “I LongGled this whole problem and it gave me a half-decent answer.”

Are these silly? Yes. Are they sillier than “AI Mode” and “AI Overviews”? Honestly, no. At least they stick. At least they tell you what they are for.

Forty years on the factory floor taught me one thing

I worked in a factory for over forty years. We made things. And here is what I learned about why products fail.

About half the time, when a defective product comes off the line, the real problem was decided way upstream — at the planning stage. Somebody decided to ship a feature that engineers had not finished, or somebody named a part something nobody could remember, or somebody assumed the customer would just figure it out.

That is what I see in Google right now. Smart engineers, real progress, real new technology. But on the customer-facing side — the naming, the layout, where the AI sits on the page — somebody upstream made decisions that ignored what users actually want.

I am not anti-AI. I use ChatGPT. I find it useful. But when I open Google, I am not asking for an essay. I am asking for sources. Those are two different jobs.

A 60-year-old request, plainly stated

To Google, if anyone there is listening:

• Stop putting your opinion above my links.
• Pick one name for the AI thing and stick to it.
• Let me turn it off if I want to.
• Remember that “Google it” only worked because it was simple.

I have been your customer for thirty years. I am not going anywhere right away — there is nowhere obviously better to go. But you should know that some of us, the long-time users, the people who never asked for an AI to interrupt our morning, are getting tired.

So consider AskGle. Or do not. But please, give me back the links.

Related

— Me-me

Originally posted in Japanese on my other blog. Read the Japanese version here.