Google on Tuesday announced a major overhaul of its flagship search engine that uses AI-generated summaries to replace links to news articles. This is a move that threatens to deprive traditional media companies of much-needed revenue.
A new feature called “AI Overview” debuts in the U.S. this week and answers questions like “How do I fix my toilet?” or “What is the best way to clean leather boots” – push down a set of links related to your search.
The announcement at the annual I/O conference is sure to anger news organizations and other publishers who have seen their traffic and advertising revenue plummet at the expense of Google's Internet dominance.
“By making this move, they are flipping a switch to replace the open web with proprietary content to increase their profits, which are still almost entirely driven by advertising.” says Jason Kindt, Google critic and CEO of Digital Content Next. he told the Post.
The Mountain View, California-based technology giant maintains a 90% market share in search. The company's alleged monopoly led to a landmark federal lawsuit against the company.
Industry experts estimate that AI Overview could disrupt the advertising market, potentially costing publishers more than $2 billion annually.
Mark McCallum, chief innovation officer at media company Raptive, said the new technology will “significantly reduce traffic for creators compared to traditional search products.”
“Google AI Overview still uses copyrighted content without consent or compensation and is in direct competition with independent content creators,” McCallum told the Post. “This is another example of Big Tech's efforts to destroy successful small businesses.”
Ross Hudgens, CEO of search engine optimization company Siege Media, told The Washington Post this week that some publishers could lose more than 20% of their search traffic due to Google's changes. Ta.
“Some people will just get hit,” Hudgens said.
The Post has reached out to Google for comment.
The company claimed in a blog post that links displayed within the AI overview “receive more clicks than if the page were displayed as a traditional web listing for that query.”
“As we expand this experience, we remain focused on sending valuable traffic to publishers and creators,” Liz Reid, Google's head of search, said in a blog post.
By the end of the year, over 1 billion users will have access to AI Overview in search results.
A study released last fall by Columbia University found that Google should pay between $10 billion and $12 billion for the advertising revenue generated by news organizations' search traffic.
Google has already faced intense criticism for displaying AI-generated plagiarism more prominently in search results, sometimes before human-copied content. Elsewhere, research has found that the quality of Google's search engine results is actually “deteriorating” due to the prevalence of spam.
The tech giant could also face increased scrutiny over the quality of its answers after the disastrous rollout of its Gemini chatbot AI image generation tool. The tool had to be disabled after it started spewing out historically inaccurate photos, including of a black Viking and a female Pope.
Just one day after Microsoft-backed OpenAI wowed audiences with the release of ChatGPT-4o, an updated version of its popular chatbot capable of real-time language translation and other conversational interactions, Google is expanding its AI overview to other products. announced with.
Some analysts cite the rise of ChatGPT and other chatbots as a threat to Google's search empire.
An alarming study conducted by research firm Gartner predicts that overall traffic from search engines to the web will decline by 25% in 2026 due to the rise of AI chatbots.
Google is deepening its involvement in the AI race even as it faces unprecedented scrutiny from antitrust watchdogs for alleged anticompetitive conduct across its business.
As the Post reported last October, some critics, including former Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), believe that unless regulators take action, the integration of AI capabilities will make Google more powerful in online searches. It warns that the monopoly of Japan may become even stronger.
A federal judge in the Justice Department's lawsuit against Google is expected to rule later this year.
