[marcus_holmes]

I heard Google search volumes by humans were declining, but I can't find the reference now so may be wrong. It's definitely changing the entire SEO industry.

Are they actually implementing ads in chat yet? I haven't seen an ad in Gemini yet.

Again, the results I've seen is that LLM results in search have resulted in more zero-click searches (as a proportion of all searches), which isn't increasing engagement? But again, I may be wrong, what are you basing your assertion on?

I didn't say they were blissfully ignoring anything. I gave them credit for knowing the situation they're in and doing something about it.

The problem that I was talking about (probably badly getting my point across) is that it's internal conflict and strife that causes the pain here. One part of the company is incentivised on increasing revenue on the existing business. The other part of the company is incentivised on increasing revenue for the new business. But the new business is at the expense of the old business, so it sets up internal conflict where each part of the business tries to protect its own incentives. And Google has always been afflicted with rife internal politics.

[surajrmal]

Google search related ad revenue is still going up. Volume isn't everything. Personally, as llms have gotten better I do more and more product research on Google.

[thefounder]

Even if they include ads in Gemini the issue is that Gemini is not the best AI app. It’s maybe the 3rd or 4th. So if Google becomes the 3rd best “search/AI engine” the future is not that bright.

[surajrmal]

Search's AI mode is by far the most popular "AI app". Most of the time I don't end up using Gemini, it's because search's AI mode is good enough for my needs and I use it out of habit. I imagine a lot of other would-be Gemini users are in similar shoes.

[wrsh07]

Google doesn't care if you use Gemini or Google search. But they are so so happy if the ai results in search are "good enough" that you don't need to go use a "frontier llm"

[wrsh07]

Gemini is a brand new surface that Google has created to capture the current excitement around AI, but it's not the only surface into which they're shoving AI.^

ChatGPT's growth is incredible, but they essentially have to get all of their growth from inside codex or ChatGPT apps. Google can auto query Gemini with every search. There's an interesting piece of data which is that this tells them (on a conditioned basis^^) when is the chat result more effective than the search and vice versa?

Google can force growth of Gemini by leveraging their existing properties. This is a huge asset, and if you're wondering why Meta has artificially high usage of their LLMs it's because distribution is hard and Meta and Google have a lot of surface area to distribute on

^ no, I don't mean this as a compliment, although it does lend credence to the idea that Google is willing to update its current products with AI.

^^ ie conditional on the user's willingness to view the chat result

[thefounder]

People stop searching (aka googling). They just want to do stuff with AI and Google’s AI stuff is bad. That’s my whole point.