. And since many people experience the internet through Google, these changes amount to a remaking of how millions use the web and the billions of dollars companies make from them.It’s also a strategic gamble: to disrupt the lucrative search ecosystem that Google erected will pay out by making room for“There are still more questions than answers as to how Google's search ad revenues will fare with the introduction of AI Overviews,” said Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf, a senior analyst at eMarketer..
“We have a deep understanding of information needs, and a strong technological foundation, and we continue to rethink what Search can be to serve users in new ways,” Google said in a statement. Rand Fishkin, the CEO of SparkToro, an audience research software company, said Google likely believes two things to be true: that they reduce the risk of disruption or competition from other AI-powered answer engines by implementing their own; and they view the risks to their core, paid advertising business as relatively light, or even nonexistent.
Scott Jenson, a former Google employee who left the company last month, said the AI projects he was working on “were poorly motivated and driven by this panic that as long as it had ‘AI’ in it, it would be great.” Inearlier this week, he said the company’s shortsighted approach wasn’t fueled by user needs, but by “a stone cold panic that they are getting left behind.”If AI models are the next platform, akin to the transition to mobile phones and apps, Google can't afford to miss out.