Most of AI usage could be easily (with a little bit of effort) replaced by just searching for the info you need, but those days search results are so poor that asking AI gets so advantageous for the average user (that don’t care / don’t know about privacy and other costs and risks that come with it)
Do you think they did it on purpose?
This brings up a point I’ve been thinking about lately. Since they’ve shoved their shitty ai answers at the top which pushes everything else down, they must be losing gobs of money on their own ads now. All in the name of trying to “win the race”. I’d be curious to see how much this has cost them.
If I’m understanding correctly, it’s a deliberate strategy to keep users on google instead of clicking away to other websites. “Zero-click results”. I’m guessing the firsthand ad revenue exceeds any referral bonuses, I don’t know.
The ads will be in the “AI Summaries” soon
They aren’t juicing the AI overviews for ad revenue yet, that will come later.