World Browser War III and the Rise of Agentic AI Slop

Written By Damon Carroll

Artlist.io generated this browser battle. The flying DuckDuckGo-lings are impressive.

I ditched Google Chrome last month. Yeah, Google is a monopoly, and yeah, they’re unethical for ‘shady business practices’. But yeah, they’re also the target of losers who want to dethrone them.

Any other company that rose to such heights would behave the same; the epitome of John Galbraith’s American Capitalism.

As I sought to learn more about the Google AI search engine headlines, Internet spies began inundating my YouTube feed with damning Chrome videos. I was warned to switch browsers before I started putting glue on my pizza.

My anxiety spiked. I felt queasy and pwned. I realized that World Browser War III is underway. The competition is fierce: comprehensive list of growing browser marketplace.

If you’re a privacy junkie like me, check out this list of the 11 most secure browsers.

On my iPhone, I switched to its native Safari browser and selected the DuckDuckGo search engine. On my desktop, I diversified:

GOOGLE and AGENTIC AI and AI SLOP

Falling through the rabbit hole, I learned that Google changed its search engine to an AI-only version. The phrase “Agentic AI” is everywhere. It’s the new buzzword, and it’s gonna help enterprises and individuals blah blah blah blah blah…

Agentic | adjective | uh-JEN-tik = Able to accomplish results with autonomy, used especially in reference to artificial intelligence. (M-W)

According to the Wan Show, DuckDuckGo installs are spiking as Google’s AI search drives users away. AI is far from the digital and cultural panacea we were promised.

Journalist Patrick Boyle explains how “AI Slop” is destroying the Internet with its AI chatbots “scraping content without compensation…”:

People are furious because Google is taking their website’s content without credit nor links. Traffic and advertising is disappearing. Hard-earned and long-fought-for SEO page rank is suddenly worthless.

No visitors, no ad impressions, no money. No bueno. Kevin Powell muses that Google might have just killed websites. He discusses Matthias Ott’s article Ad Infinitum which is a super informative read. If

I trust the opinion of SEO guru Neil Patel, who says the old system is collapsing. TODAY.

AI slop has usurped Carl Jung. Not to mention legendary Richard Feynman. As far as I can tell, there’s now an “old Internet” that’s dead.

BROWSER WARS RECAP

Soooooooo, Google abandoned its online search tool that won them World Browser War II? That victory led to a 70 percent market share of worldwide desktop browsers and a 66 percent share of mobile phone browsers.

Now they’re giving it up because, because, uhmmm, because Agentic AI?

“I see,” said the blind woman. I watched a dozen videos that explain Google’s justification, but I’m with the blind lady. The House of El explains how Google’s AI exposed a “shitshow”:

El’s pretty face and mesmerizing voice distracted me, so I’m still confused. But I did come away with two facts: she’s HELLA smart. And I’m old.

In fact, I’m so old that I couldn’t legally drink alcohol when Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer (IE) were lobbing mortars at one another in World Browser War 1.

I remember hand-coding HTML in the ‘90s — I had to constantly check code in both Netscape and IE on both a Mac and a PC. Four checks. Something was always messed up; not enough padding here; add five pixels there. What a mess.

These days, a 5-year-old kid can make a website in 10 minutes.

I digress.

IE won WBW1 by the turn of the millennium. But Netscape’s demise led to Mozilla’s Firefox, and soon Apple’s Safari joined the battle. By the mid-aughts, WBW2 was in full swing.

A decade later the war was over after Google’s Chrome destroyed everyone. And now they’re giving it up. I wonder if Vegas is taking bets on WBW3.

DuckDuckGo anyone?

Artlist.io generated another browser battle. Superpowers seem to really hate Firefox.

Damon Carroll
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