Years ago, I made money through Wordpress. The stack was fast for that time, development was simple, and if there were no clients I could develop my own sites and monetise through Adsense. Simpler times, and easier money, for sure.

print "Hello World!"
goto 10

OK. Perhaps not THAT simple!

Google as Skynet

Google has of course evolved over time, as has the web itself and technology generally. If Google had not evolved then all the money paid to those comp sci PhD’s would be a waste. However, I am not convinced that we are ‘going forward’ in any real sense.

A Google search these day’s is primarily about AI. Often a selection of snippets taken from sites with content related to the subject you are asking about and cobbled together to (mostly) make sense to a human. The top result could therefore be arguably considered plagiarised.

Is this the best we can do?

The next three results are usually YouTube videos. Below that sponsored (paid) results. Generally, at least if the content has any monetisable potential at all, the first non-Google ecosystem response are below the fold. There may be as few as a single result at the very bottom that is ‘independent.’ This strikes me as incredibly greedy and so I have stopped using Google search.

This choice was not made due to some socialist ideas about fairness and equity, but rather it is because I wish to support small publishers who often keep the web alive and interesting. There is only so much AI slop a person can stand.

How long can you read ‘middle of the road’ generic prose, even if the text is grammatically correct?

Beyond Boomerism

Aside from my personal sadness at watching the web die a slow death at the hands of a terminator that is more relentless than Cyberdyne could ever design, my overwhelming impression is just how much things have changed and how much the have stayed the same.

People were moaning about Wordpress ‘bloat’ back in the mid 2000’s and they still are. Zero difference, apart from the ultra specifics.

The web is still mainly html, css, and ECMAScript. Again, minimal change, except that now JavaScript is available via more runtimes than can possibly coexist long term. 10-20 compile-to-js variants seems too many, but time will tell and I can wait.

Web Technology Usage Statistics:

• HTML: 97% of websites
• CSS: 95% of websites
• Client-side JavaScript: 98.9% of websites

Source: W3Techs surveys, August 2025