An outage affecting web hosting giant Amazon Web Services (AWS) has taken out vast swathes of the web, including websites, banks and some government services. The internet giant blamed the outage, which began around 3 a.m. on the U.S. east coast, on DNS, a system that converts web addresses into IP addresses so that customer apps and websites can load.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/20/amazon-dns-outage-breaks-much-of-the-internet/
“AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet,” reads the statement by the Yahoo-owned company. “This service will no longer be available in AOL plans. As a result, on September 30, 2025 this service and the associated software, the AOL Dialer software and AOL Shield browser, which are optimized for older operating systems and dial-up internet connections, will be discontinued.”
https://www.theverge.com/news/757194/aol-dial-up-is-dead
Everyone knows traditional search is dying. No one quite knows what comes next. But the rise of AI search comes with a brutal cost for traditional websites. According to the same Pew research, searches with AI Overviews result in dramatically fewer clicks to other websites. When Google shows an AI summary, users click through to other sites just 8% of the time, compared to 15% for searches without AI answers, which represents a nearly 50% drop. Even worse, only 1% of AI Overviews generate clicks to the sources they cite. What's emerging from the chaos is a discipline marketers are calling GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) or AIO (Artificial Intelligence Optimization), essentially SEO for the AI era. But unlike traditional search optimization, which followed somewhat predictable patterns, AI optimization feels more like reading tea leaves.
https://qz.com/internet-future-google-search-ai
"It’s my theory explaining how the Internet was colonized by platforms, why all those platforms are degrading so quickly and thoroughly, why it matters, and what we can do about it," Doctorow explained in a follow-up article. "We’re all living through a great enshittening, in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of shit. It’s frustrating. It’s demoralizing. It’s even terrifying."
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/02/as-internet-enshittification-marches-on-here-are-some-of-the-worst-offenders/
Research shows 25% of web pages posted between 2013 and 2023 have vanished. A few organisations are racing to save the echoes of the web, but new risks threaten their very existence.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240912-the-archivists-battling-to-save-the-internet
When tech entrepreneur Ian Leaman needed to buy a website address for his new artificial intelligence start-up he found that he had an expensive problem. One web address, npc.ai, was sold for $250,000 this year, while another, service.ai, went for $127,500, according to one report. Such head-turning figures are a side effect of the feverish buzz surrounding AI start-ups and technology.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-67284936
Omegle, a chat service that pairs users with a random person so they can talk via text or video, is shutting down. Leif K-Brooks, who launched the service when he was 18 years old, announced its closure and talked about its humble beginnings, as well as how it grew organically because "meeting new people [is] a basic human need." While he didn't delve into the specific reasons for Omegle's shutdown, he admitted that "some people misused [the service], including to commit unspeakably heinous crimes." In the end, he found the "existing stress and expense of operating Omegle, and fighting its misuse" to no longer be sustainable, both financially and psychologically. "Frankly, I don’t want to have a heart attack in my 30s," he added.
https://www.engadget.com/omegle-shuts-down-after-14-years-of-random-chats-125007355.html