60 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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David Pierce

David Pierce

Editor-at-Large

Editor-at-Large

    More From David Pierce

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    David Pierce
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    David Pierce
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    David Pierce
    David Pierce
    David Pierce
    Google seems to be aggressively de-listing spammy search results.

    Search VP Pandu Nayak told me the other day Google is dead serious about enforcing its policies against content designed to game search results. Looks like that’s already happening:

    Many SEOs and site owners are saying their sites are no longer showing in the Google Search index, even for a site command, after receiving the manual actions.

    Google helped make the web a mess. Now it has to fix it.

    David Pierce
    David Pierce
    “If these chatbots are supposed to be magical, why are so many of them dumb as rocks?”

    Shira Ovide at The Washington Post got to try Amazon’s shopping chatbot, Rufus. She’s not a fan:

    I asked a few similar questions about the best cycling gloves to keep my hands warm in winter. In one search, a pair that the bot recommended were short-fingered cycling gloves intended for warm weather.

    Shira never quite figured out what Rufus was thinking, and it led her to the big question: can you believe anything a chatbot tells you, ever, anywhere? And if not, what are we doing here?

    David Pierce
    David Pierce
    The epic, high-tech story of... a marshmallow startup.

    I love a good tale of absurd startup behavior, and the Smashmallow story is both about marshmallows and somehow still extremely on brand:

    Smashmallows were designed to look like an artisanal, boutique product, but that wasn’t enough for Sebastiani: He wanted to manufacture billions of them, to build a company that would bestride Candyland like a squishy colossus.

    Turns out that if you try hard enough, you can Silicon Valley Brain almost anything.