Google discovering that AI search may quietly steer shoppers toward higher prices is a fun twist: first search results became ads, then ads became recommendations, and now recommendations apparently have a concierge fee. At this rate, AI powered shopping just means your wallet gets the hallucination.
Oh look, they finally found a way to make AI profitable! (It’s just scamming people again)
i would have thought this was exactly the intention
This dystopia is terrible.
Next: AI knows your income level so it automatically raises prices to match.
Then: someone comes up with an income spoofing service for shopping. For a fee, of course.
Then: you have to add an income verification to browse internet shopping.
All of that is already in play and more.
They know your income, spending habits, outstanding credit balances, browsing history, etc. They know if you are employed, had a child, had a divorce or death in the family. They know your health and how active you are.
With all that data, AI knows what you are willing to spend on an item or service.
There are HR services that use AI to look at all of this meta data to determine how desperate you are for a job and how low they can offer a salary/wage.
You’re the product.
They want one giant walled internet that is nothing more than a giant company town. You own nothing. Every dollar you earn is consumed by the system that knows how much it can take.
This isn’t just google; it’s a new grift using the internet overall. I look something up online at the grocery store website, they put a lot of focus on you should order online and pick it up. I go to the store and it’s cheaper than the online price for the same store. We’re all getting played.
Groceries I haven’t checked out because I just go out and buy food when I need food, delivery costs more money than moving my ass for a kilometer, but for other things, in-person stores are still more expensive than online-only. If I want oil, filters, etc for cars, it’s twice as much in physical stores compared to online.
I think it really depends on what you’re getting. For groceries, I generally only buy the half off stuff. Parts are interesting because unless you know exactly what to get, you might end up running in circles. Both vehicles I have are 1998 engines, yet one is a 2000 and one is 2003. It was fun to figure out what serpentine belt I needed.
Another example, manufacturer sells a part for a steam table to regulate the temperature. It was $120 for one part. Alright so I buy one for a customer. Then I did some research. Bought 8 from the UK for the price of one shipped to the US.
It was fun to figure out what serpentine belt I needed.
I’ve been sold the wrong serpentine belt once or twice from an in-person store, never from an online catalogue though.
I cross-reference the OEM parts catalogue and if necessary, images of the part being replaced to the factory repair manual. 99% of the time, parts by VIN are accurate in the OE catalogue, but occasionally someone has retrofitted some newer or older part in a pinch, in which case the parts store guy is just about useless anyway. E.g my car doesn’t have the sump drain plug it should, meaning someone has changed the oil pan for a slightly older one. My engine was in production from 2003 through 2008 in that exact configuration and mine’s a 2007, so a few things had already been revised in that time (the engine got a bigger update in 2008, at which point it got a new engine code)
I had to get the model number off of the old belt to get the correct belt. That’s how I learned I have a 1998 engine in a 2003 frame.
What are you talking about? There’s no way that Google could profit from that… /s
One more reason to get off the net.
Oh are they finally finding a wage approach profitability? I got to say, literally just scamming shoppers was…not at the bottom of my list.
I don’t understand. When you click through to buy something from the retailer, does the price then show as normal? Google Search isn’t a storefront, so I don’t understand how this is actually impacting people’s pocketbooks, outside of anchoring items at a higher price in their mind or something. Either way it’s shitty on Googles part and fuck them, but i don’t understand.
Pichai, you fucking banchode.
They didn’t expect this one weird trick!
Q: How can people find the lowest $/unit on groceries and not spend so much?
