[dangus]

This “Google Zero” thing (which is just the name of a theory made up by some guy) is missing the part where Google figures out a way replace its ad revenue.

If Google doesn’t take you to someone else’s website or app, they can’t charge advertisers any money.

[omnimus]

Not sure why it would be controversial. They are already doing it.

[dangus]

But it’s not profitable, that’s my point.

They are doing it but it is less lucrative than the non-AI search engine.

Like video streaming, they are forced into this via new competition.

E.g., ChatGPT is the marketshare leader in the new version of search engines, local AI models + ChatGPT for complex queries is the default “search engine” of Apple Intelligence, not Google on Safari.

Google’s risk here is that they’re about to lose everyone who isn’t running queries from their own platforms who still overwhelmingly use Google for their “general life queries” today (Apple users on web browsers, Windows users on web browsers).

[omnimus]

I can't know whats Google plan nor do I care much. I am just saying that it is quite apparent that Google is trying to replace Search with LLMs because they are already trying to do it.

One would think that they have a plan why they are doing it. They are the ones seeing the numbers.

We can speculate here about their risks or the stupidity of the plan... but i wouldn't say Google zero is some conspiration theory - flawed strategy maybe. I don't think people would be surprised if google.com became big "ask gemini" field. Many users probably wouldn't even notice.

[trogdor]

Couldn’t they just show ads alongside the search result?

[dangus]

For sure, but is that proven to be as good at revenue as the status quo?

It’s kind of like how the movie industry killed their Blu-ray, DVD, and theater ticket sales in favor of streaming.

Or how digital download/streaming music took decades to match the pre-Napster revenue peak of the industry. It’s still barely ahead of that level and that’s before adjusting for inflation.

[omnimus]

I am sure they can figure out even better. Like put the product purchase link in the answer.