> Reddit traffic is down and management blames AI search not referring users to Reddit.

Couldn't have anything to do with management's decision to require logins to access the site.

> Intel reports PC sales are down. That's likely related to RAM costs, which made price/performance of new PCs drop.

How is this not related to "AI cost fears"?

The amount of cash being dumped into AI datacenters has driven up the cost of a lot of other things in adjacent industries.

In short: We've made the internet suck, and people are avoiding it.

Google Ad revenue didn’t drop, but it also didn’t grow as much as the market anticipated (search grew 12% vs expectations of 16%)

The issue is that investors expected the legacy revenue sources to compensate for the negative cash flows required for the AI build out. The expectation was that the traditional business would provide a risk backstop because they would be uncorrelated to AI related revenue. The Q3 earnings provide some evidence that the old business may not be the backstop everyone hoped and worse AI may be cannibalizing that revenue. Even if AI manages to compensate, the unit economics of AI is far worse than traditional software, meaning Google et al would have effectively traded a money printer business for a commodity utility, a horrible trade by nearly any standard you can imagine. Of course this is just one quarter but Wall Street is naturally going to hate that possibility being live which it is now.

Google ad revenue (or even search ad revenue) did not drop. It just grew slower than it did last quarter.

The risk of not putting in AI is that someone else does, users like it and Google’s lock on search gets compromised.

That would be a much, much more existential risk for Google. It may well be worth a substantial hit to revenue and even market cap to stave off that possibility.

> AI results from search engines don't generate the click-through revenue that search ads did.

Doesn't this seem totally obvious? Like, they removed the need to click through things, that's kind of the defining behavior of these AI results.

"AI results from search engines don't generate the click-through revenue that search ads did."

Photo of Google leadership regarding this issue: https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/037/873/We'...

> Intel reports PC sales are down. That's likely related to RAM costs, which made price/performance of new PCs drop.

My university has put all the laptop and PC purchases for staff and faculty on hold and they are approving them only on a case by case basis.

> AI results from search engines don't generate the click-through revenue that search ads did

The question in my mind, is what were all the Google execs smoking when they decided to kill the golden goose?

It's not like this is a non-obvious outcome of sending all your most valuable searches to an in-house AI answer instead of an ad click...

AI Externalities.

A sort of cost, but like other externalities never paid by those who incur them on others. Well, except for Google I guess.

It turned out an actual personal assistant is so much more useful than the internet.

> Roblox reports user counts are down

Please don't tell me you value your shitty 401k more than keeping kids off of this horrible game

Wut it's exactly what's happening. Why are you talking about Roblox and not Amazon etc. this is a weird comment to be at the top of hn

Everyone I know is holding off purchases of new PCs (including me) due to RAM costs and wanting more RAM.

> Reddit traffic is down

Reddit has completely turned me off with their user hostile policies. I used to browse Reddit without having an account while drinking my coffee in the morning.

Now, I need to be logged in otherwise the responses in a thread or posts in the sub-reddits are hidden behind a non-removal modal on mobile.

Well, Reddit sorry to say but it did not work and now I read a book.