[spaceman_2020]

The problem for Google isn't just technical, it's organizational.

The entire organization and all its products are built around ads. If a new product comes along that drastically reduces the number of pages a user views, what happens to the ad revenue?

Right now, every click, every query is an impression. But if there's an all-knowing AI answering all my questions accurately, what incentive do I, as a user, have to search again, scroll through pages, and look around multiple pages?

Google will have to adopt a radically new business model and there's organizational inertia in doing that.

[vineyardmike]

> The entire organization and all its products are built around ads.

Citation?

I assume ads are a big part of Google but I suspect it’s not organized around ads.

Eg I assume the GCP teams don’t report to any ad teams.

I bet Gmail team -which does show ads- is primarily managed to optimize for the paid enterprise customers and they just have an ads guy shove ad boxes in where they can.

I bet no one at Nest reports to an ads team, and they’re organized around making money on a per-device basis instead.

Is Google good at adopting new successful business models? Ask stadia. But I bet there’s plenty of organizational clarity that alternative revenue streams are important.

Disclaimer: I don’t know the internal structure of these teams

[jeffbee]

> I bet Gmail team -which does show ads-

How many people even experience ads in gmail? They aren't there on Workspace or EDU. They aren't there on gmail.com unless you are using the tabbed inbox with the Promotions tab enabled, and you visit that tab. Which, honestly, who would?

[vineyardmike]

> How many people even experience ads in gmail?

I'll be honest, I was under the impression they stopped showing ads on Gmail when I was writing this. I actually google'd it but couldn't find any news source citing that google stripped ads off gmail so I omitted to mention it.

[spaceman_2020]

> I assume ads are a big part of Google but I suspect it’s not organized around ads.

Other than GCP, how many products can you name that are not monetized by ads?

Advertising is nearly 80% of their revenue. It has remained stubbornly near that mark despite the massive list of products they keep releasing (and shutting down early).

Large organizations tend to coagulate around their profit centers. Google isn't any more immune to it than, say, IBM.

[zackkatz]

They could still serve AdSense-style ads inside the generated content.

[spaceman_2020]

Yeah, but those ad impressions and clicks go down drastically. Is Google ready to live in a world with 50% lower revenue?

[jsnell]

> Right now, every click, every query is an impression.

The vast majority (maybe 95%?) of my searches don't show ads.

[jasonjmcghee]

Wow. Very different from my experience. If I'm not using Brave, often the first 5ish results are ads.