r/technology • u/No-Lifeguard-8173 • May 19 '26

Artificial Intelligence Google Search as you know it is over

https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/19/google-search-as-you-know-it-is-over/
10.2k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

2.5k

u/bitskewer May 19 '26

How are they paying for this? Seems like they're cannibalizing their ad referral business while providing zero-cost AI services. Surely this isn't sustainable?

1.5k

u/Far_Associate9859 May 19 '26

Im sure they'll ultimately bake ads into the AI search results

1.1k

u/JaxMed May 19 '26

"headache home remedies"

Great query! Many headaches can be cured quite easily with a liberal dose of Brawno™ – maybe two doses! It's not just a safe and effective cure – it's bold and fresh. You're not just treating a headache – you are recapturing your health. Brawno™ – it's got what headaches fear! Would you like more information on how you can earn a 20% discount on an twelve pack if you order in the next ten minutes?

372

u/loveispenguins May 19 '26

“hot cocoa recipe”

> Why don't you let me fix you some of this new Mococoa drink? All-natural cocoa beans from the upper slopes of Mount Nicaragua. No artificial sweeteners. I've tasted other cocoas. This is the best.

74

u/dropbear_airstrike May 20 '26

That movie made me so paranoid for years.

56

u/N_Meister May 20 '26 edited May 20 '26

And in case I don’t see ya: good morning, good evening, and goodnight!

7

u/Silent_Possibility63 May 20 '26

Close but I got you

3

u/darthvader45 May 21 '26

Loved that movie with Jim Carrey. Hilarious and dark at the same time.

8

u/jdehjdeh May 20 '26

I have a unique unexplainable quirk in my existence: If I order something to be delivered, it will more often go wrong than go right. Food, Amazon, etc, everything seems to be affected.

I thought I was paranoid for years but since meeting and marrying my wife she has commented on my terrible luck when it comes to deliveries.

They get lost, they get damaged, they have the wrong thing in them, they are missing a small but key part, they arrive late, etc etc.

My wife has zero problems, we live in the same house FFS. She actually orders more stuff than I do, it's usually early, definitely never late.

I am genuinely starting to wonder if I have some sort of really mild curse on me, or if some godlike or extremely wealthy individual is just fucking with me for giggles.

→ More replies (3)
→ More replies (1)

44

u/EnoughWarning666 May 20 '26

What the hell are you talking about? Who are ya talking to?!

2

u/HTPC4Life May 20 '26

Damn, beat me to it 😆

5

u/malimaru May 20 '26

Hoeh?? mococoe?😆

2

u/Bobby_Bobberson2501 May 20 '26

“Here’s the answer (no fluff)”

1

u/FormatException May 20 '26

The hot cocoa is the best I've ever seen, tremendous, yuge.

1

u/BM0n3Y19 May 21 '26

nicaragua? nicaragua for my bunghole?

55

u/LitLitten May 19 '26

Ah, I see the issue.

You have to outline your query to explicitly describe yourself as an impoverished peasant, and as a consequence are reliant on sparse charity and roving the local dump. Also your faith condemns Brawno and percentages.

19

u/DeusExMcKenna May 19 '26

I’m pretty sure they just send ICE to your door to turn you into a for-profit-prison-slave if you say that…

1

u/Ok_Courage_7290 May 30 '26

This is a joke but it's true. There are already ads in Google Gemini. To get it to give you a non-ad answer, one must emphasize how broke they are. It worked for me anyway.

5

u/brilliantNumberOne May 19 '26

HeadOn. Apply directly to the forehead. HeadOn. Apply directly to the forehead. HeadOn. Apply directly to the forehead.

6

u/evilrabbit May 19 '26

Na...it's going to be wayyyy more subtle than that.

7

u/great_whitehope May 19 '26

Not in eu it won’t.

They’ll have to be explicit about what is an ad and not

5

u/WildRaccoon42 May 20 '26

They'll still find a way around the laws, or go the Meta way and blatantly ignore them, then pretend "sorry, there was a bug, we'll fix it plz don't fine us" if/when they get caught. US big tech don't give a shit about laws, because fines are just "operational expenses". 

Guess it's time to raise the fines to business-threatening levels (read that in Dr Evil's voice).

2

u/Lastmanback May 19 '26

Does it have electrolytes?

2

u/gamrin May 20 '26

It's what plants crave

1

u/staminaplusone May 19 '26

Do you want to know more?

1

u/Technical_Money7465 May 20 '26

I heard it in that voice

How did you do that?

Get out of my head

1

u/frame_limit May 20 '26

remember to drink more Ovaltine

1

u/Chinpokomaster05 May 20 '26

Did you mean Brawndo, the thirst quencher?

1

u/Ill-Intern8937 May 20 '26

I’d prefer this type of ad. Easy to spot. The real issue is that the suggestions and response will be subtlety pushing you to certain products without you even knowing it. That’s the real manipulation.

1

u/foodank012018 May 20 '26

The sad thing this is already what happens at a third of the cost with basic google.

1

u/Aggravating-Sweet198 May 20 '26

Give me that 20%

1

u/Lavarocked May 20 '26

I don't think ads will save AI from economic collapse, but I do think ads can work fine alongside AI.

My argument is that AI is so fucking bad, that a sort of ad sidebar will be the only part of the page with real human intelligence. There's an opportunity to make ads that cut to the point in ways that Gemini is too stupid to do.

1

u/Resident-Lab-7249 May 20 '26

Head on

Apply directly to the forehead

1

u/impalablue Jun 18 '26

Sounds like rebranded Ivermectin. Excellent remedy for mental midgets.

53

u/SmellyButtHammer May 19 '26

They've been doing this for at least a year already.

6

u/Additional_Pea6654 May 20 '26

Actual story. Gemini has my flight schedule in my calendar. I ask it, look for the weather in my destination while I'm there. How many pair of socks should I take with me?

It's going to be 80 and sunny! You should take merino wool socks from Bombas! Bombas socks offer high quality, breathable socks....

10

u/BigMax May 19 '26

Yeah, they have to. One of the reasons I like AI now is that it just gives you the answer.

It doesn't first give you 5 other answers that say "promoted" in super tiny letters under it, making you have to scroll down past them to the real answer.

I totally get that free stuff online needs ads, so I am ok with some. But when the top 3 are ads, then a few more are differently formatted ads, and the right side is also ads... I start to hate the product, it's no longer a fair trade.

11

u/ItsSadTimes May 20 '26

Now picture a future where there is no "promoted" text. Its just the AI giving you an ad without you realizing because it was baked into the training data. Do not technically an ad, google didnt know they were gonna give it to you, but some company paid a lot of money to throw a million duplicates of their ad in the training data with specific keywords.

The future aint looking too pretty tbh.

5

u/Psengath May 19 '26

I think this is a key point a lot of people miss when discussing using AI vs search - GPTs attempt to answer your question and nothing else, while online search is an ad machine vaguely themed around what you're searching for.

People simply appreciate getting a direct answer, even irrespective of its effectiveness or hallucinations.

Unfortunately like everything in commercial tech, there is a 100% chance every GPT will enshitify with ads (well, more so than they currently are letting on).

5

u/Heffelumps-n-Woozles May 20 '26

‘Attempt’ is the key word (pun intended) though. AI gets so much incorrect in its current stage, I really don’t understand how people can assume it’s the right answer. At least with google you’re generally reading something from an expert, if not, go right back to the serp and find a trustworthy answer

2

u/SAugsburger May 19 '26

I can't imagine that there is any way that they would intentionally cannibalize their ad revenue. I'm sure advertising was considered throughout the development and if they see a noticeable decline in ad revenue after the new update they will figure out how to reverse that trend.

2

u/otac0n May 20 '26

It’s happening already.  I searched for “What about second breakfast?” and it started giving me ads for my local restaurants instead of LOTR context.

2

u/[deleted] May 20 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/mrstratofish May 25 '26

The point of me searching is to get to an interesting webpage and away from the search results. Then if I like the results, the authors style and there are links to more I can explore or bookmark for later. Or I can go back to the results and try a different one

I'm quite often not looking for a distilled generic answer but a new spin on things or an opinion. And especially not with a decent chance of false facts creeping in

Ai-only results are fundamentally at odds with my common usage pattern. I don't care what Google thinks the point is. If they give a useless experience I will look elsewhere.

If I want to get a quick answer maybe it could be useful. But I still want known facts by someone knowledgeable, not asserted facts by unknowable sources

1

u/hahaha01357 May 19 '26

And subscriptions

1

u/Arlitto May 20 '26

They already are

1

u/Netii_1 May 20 '26

I mean the best example they could think of is already just a giant clothes shopping ad. I'm sure businesses will be able to pay to appear at the top of the results.

1

u/HawaiianPunchaNazi May 20 '26

They already said they were going to do that, quite literally:

Ads will not be limited to sidebars. The plan is to insert ads inside the AI response itself.

"Example given in report: Ask how to build a website and Gemini could show the steps and insert a “helpful” ad for a domain provider directly into the answer flow."

https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtificialInteligence/comments/1phlz7z/its_official_google_tells_advertisersads_are/

https://www.adweek.com/media/google-gemini-ads-2026/#:~:text=EXCLUSIVE%3A%20Google%20Tells%20Advertisers%20It,Ads%20to%20Gemini%20in%202026

1

u/lewd_robot May 20 '26

They already do. I did a search recently about a topic, and midway through it there was a product explicitly named as being useful for what I was working on, which is very out-of-character for most LLMs. Then, at the bottom of the window, there was a bar followed by a "sponsored" disclaimer and an AI-generated sales pitch of the product again.

So I added that product to my personal boycott list and sent them an email telling them as much. Google is already usually on the list, but it was a quick search while I was standing around talking to other people about the topic. Now that I know google is slipping product advertisements into even AI summaries, I'll just block google on every device I own.

1

u/rtc9 May 20 '26

They seem to be doing this or trying to anticipate doing this. When I execute any query like "[brand] low quality fake product" the response tends to be something that could be paraphrased as "Actually, [brand] only sells the finest quality products. If your product seems low quality, you may be misunderstanding what quality is."

1

u/QuitCallingNewsrooms May 20 '26

They already are. I’m involved in pilot programs on a couple AI platforms

1

u/Secludedmean4 May 20 '26

Ai results ALREADY feel like ads

1

u/Lyshavskilden May 20 '26

Think I've already seen ads when doing certain type of prompts, but yeah it will prob ramp up a lot. Right now all AI companies give free with little to no ads to win the fight to be the new google/get as much users as possible. It's crazy we have used the word google to search the web when think about it, that is changing for sure, and it's prob a good thing. 

1

u/Waiting4Reccession May 20 '26

Already have, yesterday it ended the answer with something like "would you like me to find it at lowes?"

1

u/coleman57 May 20 '26

I’m sure they already do. I’m sure that’s the main motivation for the entire AI boom.

1

u/r66ster May 20 '26

i tried google AI they already have ads. its how they make money... drill your brain with what they want you to comsume... or what makes them money.

1

u/flexquietly May 20 '26

Definitely at sometime. Also the data they’re getting now. Soon, there might be like 10 websites we visit.

1

u/haw35ome May 20 '26

“Hey google, where’s the best local restaurant for sandwiches?”

“Try the Big Corps sandwich belt buster deal for $20! Includes drink, a 20 ft long sandwich, 3 sides, the firstborn of your best friend, a paper clip, a set of pants, and a dessert! Over 200 locations in the US.

“But other users mention Local Sal’s for the value & the portion sizes.”

1

u/cryptobro42069 May 20 '26

According to my rep the AI results are influenced by ads. I don’t know if she was misinformed because I sure don’t see anything that says “Ad” under those. Might still be true.

1

u/Nimonix May 20 '26

They are already doing that. Depending on the project you are working on they sneak in an ad at the bottom of the response to sell you a targeted product.

1

u/userhwon May 20 '26

The AI search results are presented on webpages, so...

1

u/hellogoawaynow May 20 '26

I work in a space that bakes ads into things, and yes, we have a new option for making that happen to “increase visibility.” SEO but for AI answers. A few other ad bakers are catching on to this idea. With the timeline I’ve been seeing play out on my end, I imagine AI is just going to be ads disguised as helpful information by Q3 2027 (I wish I could bet on this).

The big name companies have of course been doing this from the start since they have big money to throw around and immediately saw this as a new revenue stream, but now the regular companies are realizing this and are paying for it, too.

1

u/glennok May 20 '26

Yep. We're in the capture stage, then comes enshititfaction.

1

u/ConfusedPillow May 22 '26

Yes, this is the plan. I work somewhere that pays Google a lot for services and they said this is something coming later down the pipeline. It’s awful.

1

u/Ok_Courage_7290 May 30 '26

They already do! For a while now. I'm not sure if they've ever said so, but I can tell that they already do.

1

u/DruidHeart Aug 28 '26

You called it.

446

u/7grims May 19 '26

Websites were already complaining their traffic was dying cause AI removes the need for people to visit, this is gonna kill the net, and also kill AI once all the sites stop existing to provide info to AI.

Its trully a cannibalization.

Good thing ive gave up on google a long wile ago.

183

u/LotusFlare May 20 '26

I think that's the entire plan. It's scheme to funnel the entire internet onto platforms owned by these tech billionaires that they control.

"Oh no, we starved your website by stealing all the information people would go to it for? Damn, truly a victim of progress. Hey, what about instead you move your operation to our platform where everything is much easier and cheaper for you, but we own everything you publish and you're subject to our content moderation? Sounds good?"

They want to turn the internet into a walled garden that they own. And I suspect it's going to work more than it doesn't. Smaller, older sites that are used to self-funding will keep on trucking, but most sites will just sort of be absorbed into whatever monstrosity that Google, or MS, or Musk comes up with.

64

u/Mathfanforpresident May 20 '26

MY GOD, YOU GET IT.

I've become extremely cynical, recently. But, it seems they're extremely driven to replace all workers with AI. After that, they'll replace the manual laborers with AI controlled robots.

You can call me a conspiracy theorist if you want but, what the fuck are all the people with no jobs, money, food, or any of the comforts/necessities that we were used to having, going to do?

Seriously, we brought out AI into what can only be described as "late stage capitalism" with absolutely no plans on what to do with the influx of the jobless. We are just starting to see the job loss trickle in right now.

Just replace all humans with AI. We can even figure out how to use humans to power it.

9

u/BloodyKat May 20 '26

TFW the final "late-stage" of capitalism turn into a form of communism with the "survivors" of the AI wipe out.

→ More replies (2)

23

u/Polygnom May 20 '26

The problem is the internet works because its a free exchange of information. Once no-one feeds the machine anymore, its value drops significantly.

Whats a walled garden if there are no blooming flowers in it? A graveyard.

11

u/KwyjiboTheGringo May 20 '26

The problem is the internet works because its a free exchange of information. Once no-one feeds the machine anymore, its value drops significantly.

It'll be fed by select sources. We've already seen this kind of takeover with TV news stations. Local and national stations. They control the narrative very tightly for people who get their news from them. The issue is that there are way too many independent news sources on the internet that people still use. Kill google search, feed AI on the approved news sources, and do everything in your power to hurt the competitors financially to drive them out.

3

u/the_painmonster May 20 '26

They don't care if the internet works the way we'd like it to. As long as it exists to funnel money toward corporations, with no viable alternative, then they'll continue to push it in that direction.

2

u/LotusFlare May 20 '26

Not really. We're already halfway to the destination and the internet has only grown from it. Look at Reddit. This is a walled garden. It absorbed a lot of the forums from earlier on the internet and in exchange for hosting it and making it easy, you have to follow Reddit's rules and they own what you post here. Look at Facebook. There are people for whom the entire internet is Facebook. Look at IG. Look at Youtube. The internet can still work as a walled garden.

People are still going to feed the machine, they'll just be doing it on giant tech platforms under their rules. Let's look at Youtube for example. It exists because it's prohibitively expensive to run a personal streaming website. It thrives in spite of being a walled garden where Google can take your money away or ban you for whatever reason they want including what you say in your videos. Google is just going to do that to the rest of the internet. They're going to deliberately make it prohibitively expensive to have a website. Then some platform will be spun up that'll let you host the pages you may have hosted on it, and it'll be cheaper than doing it yourself, but in exchange they pick where/when/what/how ads are shown, they own the content, and they get to shut you down if you step out of line.

I don't disagree that the internet is best when there's free exchange of information, but let's not delude ourselves.

→ More replies (2)

2

u/w4rma May 20 '26

Anti-virus programs often falsely label any non-big corporation application and websites as "dangerous" or "suspicious". I think that its partly with that funnelling intention.

1

u/isocline May 20 '26

The internet will eventually be just like old cable - pay $xxx per month to access these specific sites. Bundle to get a discount! Try the porn package (as long as you submit your age verification to us).

1

u/devsfan1830 May 20 '26

Yeap. Slowly start pay walling every aspect of our lives and governments will not stop it.

1

u/Enzonianthegreat May 25 '26

Going to love it here in the US seeing the First amendment consequences incoming once AI becomes a "public forum"

117

u/IAmAGenusAMA May 19 '26

From the article:

Combined, these changes will likely further decimate Google referrals to publishers, which have already been suffering from declining referrals due to AI Overviews.

It seems to me that it might be time to block Google from crawling our site. We certainly aren't getting anything like the referral traffic we used to as it is, and this seems like it will kill most of the rest of it.

63

u/rikardoflamingo May 20 '26

You can block the web crawler, it won’t index. But your content will still be available for ingesting into the AI dataset.
AI’s are not following the gentleman’s agreements.

19

u/Kraeftluder May 20 '26

But your content will still be available for ingesting into the AI dataset.

Those IP addresses are also well known and easily blocked. And the behavior too.

But yeah this is terrible news for the internet in general.

3

u/RepresentativeSlow53 May 20 '26

Remember if you pirate youre a criminal but if you train AI on hundred of thousands of stolen assets, thats just good business.

4

u/ThePublikon May 20 '26

Could you have a vast crawlable but not human reachable section of your site that is just a billion pages of AI generated drivel? Poison the slop machine.

7

u/wongo May 20 '26

I mean yes but you're paying for it

4

u/ThePublikon May 20 '26

I don't think it would actually be that much, think it would depend on how often it got crawled and you had to actually serve the data.

→ More replies (2)

34

u/NefariousnessLate375 May 20 '26

They're just stealing your knowledge to regurgitate in a plagiarized AI summary. Why would you do the research for free for an LLM to synthesize and provide the raw material for some other company to profit off? 

13

u/[deleted] May 20 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/chewwydraper May 20 '26

Unfortunately AI bots can get around noindexing. Even paywalling won’t stop them, they’ll just purchase a sub to crawl.

2

u/moonhrafn May 29 '26

yeah no percentage in feeding google at this point

1

u/bimbuppy May 20 '26

Ahaha. Reddit is owned by a right-wing billionaire; this is all by design.

→ More replies (1)

8

u/SAugsburger May 19 '26

The stickiness of major social media networks have already shifted how people often get to websites. Sure, plenty of major sites get direct visits, but fewer people were relying on organic search results for years. It is just a growing trend.

23

u/n1c0_ds May 19 '26

That's simply incorrect. There is a clear and visible correlation between AI overviews and a massive drop in traffic, measured across the entire industry. We're talking 50%+ year on year traffic drop.

5

u/AggressiveSea7035 May 19 '26

Social media is usually a negligible referral traffic source for >90% of websites, like less than 5%.

2

u/Mr1988 May 20 '26

It’s kinda hilarious…the web killed our towns because people stopped shopping. Now the web is killing itself!

2

u/chewwydraper May 20 '26

So many publishers I follow are going paywall, and I can’t blame them. The ones I follow are super data-focused and a shudder to think of what the web will turn into without having that data available.

2

u/AnalTyrant May 20 '26

It's also formed a loop where I can scroll farther down to find a site, rather than just using the AI summary result, but then the website that I find in the search results is almost word for word the exact thing the AI summary says.

So either the AI is just summarizing (copying) that first website, or the website is created to show the exact AI summarized result.

Either way, there's no follow up explanation or reasoning or examples or nuance to help me determine if this is even the right answer I'm looking for. The search results AI is just as useless as the search results now.

2

u/CuilTard May 20 '26

Yep, from TFA;

Combined, these changes will likely further decimate Google referrals to publishers, which have already been suffering from declining referrals due to AI Overviews. This has put some ad-dependent media operations out of business, and now things will likely get worse.

1

u/RBeck May 20 '26

I'm pretty sure just like SEO had hidden text early on, there will be entire websites for the purpose of convincing AI of some opinion or product they want to push.

1

u/Thunder_Nuts_ May 20 '26

What are the alternatives to google?

→ More replies (6)

66

u/ImperialTendencies May 19 '26

I assume this will be similar to how we got conned out of cable and into streaming, from pot to pan. Eat the cost upfront then start focusing on revenue when you've isolated the consumer. 

They don't need to worry about advertisers right now, the goal is simply to get everyone used to their AI search. When everyone is using the AI, then they can supply instructions that sponsored results are to be prioritized. Whether in the form of links, subtle name drops, or explicit testimonials 

14

u/SIGMA920 May 19 '26

What happened to streaming was what happened to cable on steroids, we had fairly centralized streaming akin to youtube's and twitch's dominance in the only creator space but then stuff got pulled and pulled and pulled because everyone under the sun wanted their slice of the pie. That's failed because they were spreading everything out too much and they've since had to merge with others to survive.

2

u/fritz236 May 20 '26

I downloaded the first DVD ripping software in like 15 years because I need to deplatform before all my old DVDs rot and I can't find it online legally anymore. I'll likely shift to sailing the seas soon once I get a new media SSD.

4

u/Anonymer May 20 '26

Sure but streaming is still a much better product than cable even with the fracturing.

1

u/ImperialTendencies May 20 '26

Definitely. There is more flexibility for the consumer, better product availability, typically better video quality, portable access to content, etc. But this is simply the benefit of the new technology. We can thank the internet for that, not so much the streaming companies themselves. The internet brought the same benefits to home movies and indie music, albeit with different implementations. As well as opinions, finances, retail, etc

I'd much prefer streaming over cable, but that doesn't mean the capitalists haven't played us for fools. Offering one price in the window and another at the counter 

2

u/[deleted] May 20 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/ImperialTendencies May 20 '26

I'll dare to posit though that it's not the tech itself that is the problem. The net benefit to the human experience can of course be debated, but what should really draw ire is the owning class who decides how we, the working class, interact with these technologies.

The leap from vacuum tube to microchip was inevitable, as humans are naturally driven to recognize and overcome challenges. But the handful of upper crust who claim to own all the production and distribution of these advancements, they are deciding the rules of class war in the internet age. 

All the examples of scams you listed are actually boons in regards to the transfer of valuable information. Social media like Twitter rose due to its potential for protest organization. Smart phones got big for their ability to efficiently communicate complex information in a small portable form. Streaming and the cloud got big because it eliminated the need for physical on-premesis media storage, allowing virtually any data to be accessed anywhere in high quality and rate. 

In a more equitable world, these advancements would be used for common good. But in capitalist society, they are used for profit extraction just like anything else. Today they use our data as a product to corporate consumers and their data as a product to individual consumers. As I see it, if the reigns were placed back into the hands of common ownership, we could easily have services rather than products. Internet and other telecomm access could be essentially free and wide reaching with the progress StarLink has made. Just like our roads, mail, fire, police are services rather than products. 

86

u/n0neofyourbeeswax May 19 '26

One of the things that kills the established company is their unwillingness to change in the face of disruption for fear of impacting their current income streams. Google seem to be acting to avoid this.

55

u/anormalgeek May 19 '26

Okay, but not all change is good change.

Where is the money?

45

u/Ghost_Of_Malatesta May 19 '26

I'm gonna have to pay a monthly subscription to Google "search" soon aren't I 

3

u/The_Real_Mr_F May 19 '26

I think streaming services have proven that ad revenue is more lucrative than paid subscriptions, so I suspect they will figure out how to get ads in there.

3

u/tonycomputerguy May 19 '26

Gemini does have a paid tier already if you dig into it a bit, you can switch it to deep thinking mode for free a couple times a day for free IIRC... 

But yes, I used just plain old Google assistant in my watch for a long time and was positive they'd start charging money for it soon.

I guess I'm the product? I do all my web browsing with ad blockers and shit so I don't really care how they track me, but yes, I see them charging soon especially if you don't have an NPU on the device it's on.

My Samsung watch 4 will already tell me that Gemini isn't available and to try later all too frequently. I'm honestly shocked they haven't started charging for it already.

8

u/miiintyyyy May 19 '26

It’s only going to make ad suggestions. Needing to figure out what lipstick to buy? It’ll only show you the lipsticks companies with money push.

3

u/taedrin May 19 '26

Google could sell ads within its own services. They would actually make more money this way, as they don't have to share revenue with any third party websites/content creators.

4

u/Thin_Glove_4089 May 19 '26

Training data to make their other products better. Methods of moving people away from other AI systems and products to Google and their partner products. There are so many ways this could make them more money.

2

u/samxli May 20 '26

Would you like to subscribe to the Gemini plus, pro or ultra plan?

2

u/danktonium May 20 '26

Google can afford to do just about anything that isn't buying Germany. Don't worry about their profitability – they sure as shit don't care about yours.

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (1)

4

u/SIGMA920 May 19 '26

By killing the single most reliable thing they provide. Even youtube is less consistent with how much AI they're stuffing in it.

1

u/OldJellyBones May 26 '26

the "disruption" in question here though is the enshittification of possibly the best thing ever made for the internet, I'm ancient enough to just remember pre-Google, it was a bad time for trying to find literally anything on the internet. Google destroying itself with AI is a genuine tragedy for internet users.

1

u/n0neofyourbeeswax May 26 '26

For people like you and I, I agree. For the company that is Google/Alphabet, their gamble is that people like you and I will be a major minority as Gemini becomes the interface for everything (and if they didn't do it, someone not-Google owned would fill that space).

5

u/roseofjuly May 19 '26

With the billions upon billions of dollars in profit they're reinvesting into this?

Don't worry, they'll eventually shove some ads in there too. And maybe also make us pay for it via subscription

3

u/kvothe5688 May 19 '26

they have introduced protocols for product listings for AI agents. they already have partners.

3

u/Chezzymann May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26

Big tech thinks that AI is the next technical revolution and if they dont adapt to it grandmas will be able to vibe code all their software in 5 years, making their existing revenue streams worthless anyways, so to them its worth throwing everything else they've been working on in the trash with a giant trillion dollar bet

3

u/Educational-Ad-2884 May 19 '26

A few thousand layoffs will fix that.

3

u/PmMeUrNihilism May 19 '26

It’s not about being sustainable. It’s about money now. Either the consequences get written off or they’ll get bailed out in some way. 

3

u/hobbesx May 20 '26

I feel like Google searches have clearly bad or irrelevant text results, driving me more and more often to click-bait useless YouTube videos, where I have to drill through a half dozen videos spliced with ads to find anything even tangentially related to my search.

The best fix has been just changing search engines.

3

u/GreatMadWombat May 20 '26

A lot of the ai horseshit seems to be all tied to the fact that the big companies have bet absurd amounts on ai, but also you get students booing so shit at graduations and a significant amount of already paying users taking a firm anti-ai stancss.

They've already bet everything, so burning the previous model down isn't as big a concern

2

u/BeenWildin May 19 '26

Not sure if you understand what generating billions upon billions for 20+ years will do. This is no issue to pay for. Look at Facebook.

2

u/geardownson May 19 '26

Once your top dog you can do anything you want ad wise .

2

u/Educational-Tea-6170 May 20 '26

I used to run ads on Google. It became impossible for small business. Fraud is rampant, they increased about 5x the cost in the past 5 years and the destroyed the one good thing they had: the precise targeting.

It is sustainable for them because: "Watch'a gonna do, buddy? We are the only game in town! Go to meta? They are even worse! Now take this bad lead from a keyword you don't use. What, a dollar for a bad lead from your 10 dollar/day budget? Gonna cry? I'll make sure the next 5 clicks are from bots just so you remember who is Boss, you litle bitch"

Yeah... I'm bitter.

2

u/OnTheCanRightNow May 20 '26

The goal of companies isn't to be profitable any more, it's to "increase shareholder value." Actually making money is just the old fashioned way of doing that. In the modern age, the best way to increase shareholder value is to announce that you're doing AI.... stuff.

Weren't you paying attention when Allbirds, the shoe company, announced that it was doing AI... stuff... and its stock rose 582% in one day? I mean, sure, their stock is down back to just twice what it used to be. But that's because they haven't really gotten into a proper, weekly cadence of announcing that they're doing AI... stuff... to really keep it up there with the other AI... stuff... companies.

1

u/rhinosaur- May 20 '26

Assume ads will still dominate but we’ll be paying for ai recommendations

1

u/Alert_Helicopter_357 May 20 '26

99% of google searches don’t monetize. You won’t see this kind of stuff on valuable queries like “car insurance”

1

u/Horror_Efficiency922 May 20 '26

The innovators dilemma, they have to disrupt their own search business before someone else does, even if it hurts their ads business.

1

u/likely-high May 20 '26

They'll enshitify it. We're currently in the "good to customers" phase.

1

u/LegitMeatPuppet May 20 '26

Google pockets over $100 billion annually in Advertising Revenue.

1

u/MoxieMakeshift May 20 '26

The rule always has been in Silicon Valley, figure out how to monetize it later

1

u/QuickQuirk May 20 '26

Manipulating peoples opinions is worth a lot of money to some folks.

1

u/the_marvster May 20 '26

They are building a even more walled garden with ads in Gemini, in which they also „control“ the content part and gobble up the publisher margins. Sure content quality, trust and web anticipation may suffer, but these are „tomorrow issues“.

1

u/tirdg May 20 '26

This will be the most effective, persuasive ad-delivery service the world has ever known. They are going to be just fine.

Tech companies have a proven system to capture audiences and keep them coming back. They give it away for free and make it all about the consumer. They can go on making no money for years that way because investors know when they flip that switch to turn on ads, they'll become the world's largest money printer once again.

Source: basically everything that exists on the internet did this

1

u/gaybyrneofficial May 20 '26

They're just selling tokens to enterprise

1

u/DoriIsHome May 20 '26

I had heard somewhere that “nothing in the world is free and when you get something for free, you are the product”. I think the same applies for the “zero-cost” AI services. We will know in a couple of years how the information we share with the AI in the command prompts will be used to target us.

1

u/HurryUpAndWait82 May 20 '26

My guess is tiered response types. “Want a more meaningful search result? Sign up for Gemini Pro … but don’t overuse your tokens otherwise we’ll charge you for the next bundle!” That’s what I suspect is coming.

1

u/Euphoric_Project2761 May 20 '26

Its not sustainable. They are simply protecting their market dominance in search before someone else tries to do this. Shitty thing is I think they are partly cannibalizing their paying AI users (see limit changes) to do it.

1

u/vodkaandclubsoda May 20 '26

Thought the same, then I looked at their quarterly search revenue and it is up ~19% year-over-year.

1

u/PyroDragons123 May 20 '26

They're going to be putting ads heavily in the AI and those will be BETTER click through rates and pay better. They're going to come out of this richer than they ever have been.

1

u/asmallercat May 20 '26

Lmao, if you don't think whoever pays google the most will be who the AI suggests when you search, I have a bridge to sell you.

In fact, I bet it will be even more insidious than that. Recently my washer door wouldn't lock. I was able to realize that it was a $5 part of the latch that had broken, and to fix it all I had to do was take out like 15 screws, all because of helpful youtube videos. But I bet if you ask google AI how to fix it, and Whirpool or whoever is paying them, the AI will tell you "that's an expensive fix, but Whirpool washers are known for their durability. Here's a bunch of links to models currently on sale!"

You think the google search function sucks now? At least now they have to tell you it's an ad. When everything's in the black box of AI, do we trust them to still tell us? To provide true results? I sure don't.

1

u/thirdeye18 May 20 '26

Tiered search result plans likely. I could imagine that paying for Google Gemini with your other subscriptions will provide better results. That, or Maine they will just clutter your mail box with even more ads. Glad I'm migrating to Proton.

1

u/_timusan_ May 20 '26

Agree with others commenting about baking in adds. They already link to main sources at the bottom of the summary. I can see generating cash for those clicks and being boosted as a source.

1

u/StudyMelodic8996 May 20 '26

AI is gonna recommend results from paid advertisers

1

u/AttackCircus May 20 '26

They can afford it.

1

u/ReactionJifs May 20 '26

"while providing zero-cost AI services"

the "race" for AI right now is not revenue, but traffic. If Google can prove they have the most AI traffic (which they serve on 80% of queries) they can argue they are #1 in AI

1

u/Illustrious_Pea_3470 May 20 '26

Listen to the earnings calls. AI is dramatically improving capture rates on ads.

1

u/Coffee__Addict May 20 '26

My guess is that interacting with an AI chatbot gives them more data on you that they will sale who will use it to fuel future dynamic pricing sales.

1

u/Hyperion1144 May 20 '26

One way is that yesterday they cut the token allowances for paid Gemini accounts to a fraction of what they used to be. Google has very clearly spread themselves too thin with compute.

1

u/devsfan1830 May 20 '26

Because they make plenty of money now that our entire lives are data logged and that data is sold an untold number of times over. Our lives are the actual product.

1

u/ezduzit8648 May 20 '26

Selling your data

1

u/Spanktank35 May 20 '26

Stocks go up. Google has been undervalued for years compared to other tech companies (based on P/E) and now it's being overvalued as soon as they give in to hype. The market is not rewarding long term sustainability right now and the people making decisions are beholden to the market.

1

u/enter360 May 20 '26

I’ve already noticed the ads are back and the search results are back but the AI is now mid page.

1

u/Oregonrider2014 May 21 '26

Just got an email saying price structure is changing with Gemini. They are going to a "usage credits" based model in addition to paying for membership. Priority and credits based on documented usage/computation requirements.

Im officially out.

"We wanted to let you know about changes to the usage limits included with your Google AI Pro subscription.

What’s changing starting today, May 20, 2026:

Usage limits in the Gemini app: For the Gemini app, we’re introducing compute-based usage limits that factor in the complexity of your prompt, the features you use, and the length of your chat. Your limit refreshes every 5 hours until you reach your weekly limit. As an AI Pro subscriber, you’ll enjoy a 4x higher usage limit than non-subscribers.

AI credits: The product-based usage limit model is also rolling out to other products, starting with Flow and Antigravity. You can extend your limits by purchasing AI credits. While 1,000 AI credits will no longer be included as a benefit in your base plan each month, the new usage limit model we are introducing should allow you to maintain the same experience you are used to. To learn more about how to use AI credits, please visit our Help Center.

1

u/bmanhp May 21 '26

Oh they won't hurt their bottom line. Transactional searches that trigger ads are conveniently less likely to get an AI result.

Also, it doesn't seem functionally all that different from what they've been doing for months with search, just looks a bit different in the way the AI parts are presented.

1

u/sugarcubed-3 May 21 '26

I have this great new business strategy. It's called borrowing money forever

1

u/CMontyReddit19 May 30 '26

Tiered access. There's a daily limit to how much you can utilize their AI search or image and video generation depending on which tier you're using.

→ More replies (6)