Sean Hollister, The Verge (gift link):
After doing something similar in its Google Discover news
feed, it’s starting to mess with headlines in the
traditional “10 blue links,” too. We’ve found multiple examples
where Google replaced headlines we wrote with ones we did not,
sometimes changing their meaning in the process.For example, Google reduced our headline “I used the ‘cheat on
everything’ AI tool and it didn’t help me cheat on anything”
to just five words: “‘Cheat on everything’ AI tool.” It almost
sounds like we’re endorsing a product we do not recommend at all.What we are seeing is a “small” and “narrow” experiment, one
that’s not yet approved for a fuller launch, Google spokespeople
Jennifer Kutz, Mallory De Leon, and Ned Adriance tell The Verge.
They would not say how “small” that experiment actually is. Over
the past few months, multiple Verge staffers have seen examples of
headlines that we never wrote appear in Google Search results — headlines that do not follow our editorial style, and without any
indication that Google replaced the words we chose. And Google
says it’s tweaking how other websites show up in search, too, not
just news.
This is way past “jumping the shark” territory. This is Jaws 3-D totally-lost-the-plot territory. Jesus H. Christ.
