A lot of the walled gardens are recent. Scarping massively increased due to the LLM era. There's always been mitigations, but the scale of the issue was different.
But the problem I'm talking about is SEO (search engine optimization). It is the reason for things like a page telling you about a recipe also has a long story about their grandma and how this recipe brings back all those memories in vivid details they share with you. Is it dwell time that matters? Is it more words? More "context"? I don't know, but I know that those sites get better traction. It's no surprise that writing a good search algorithm is extremely difficult. Especially as what's a measure of something useful in one context may also be a measure of shittiness in another. But ultimately would that not fall under tech debt? Making the wrong decisions, making poor approximations, etc. It's also a constant battle as websites want to get their results to the top. I'm not trying to say it is an easy task, but I think Google is on the losing side of the battle and decisions like LLM generated answers don't seem to be addressing the underlying issues and more seem like short term solutions that help the stock go up "because AI". Hell, this is CS, how often do we praise someone for being a pioneer in VR, and in blockchain, and in AI? Why is having those three things on your CV seen as a green flag instead of a red one?
