The fact that companies have focused on AI doesn’t surprise us at this point, as it’s enough to open almost any app, service or platform to see that it’s there. Chatbots are ubiquitous, productivity tools too. And few companies have embraced it as fiercely as Google, which has brought AI to much of its catalog. with uneven results.
The company that dominates, dominates. Google is an artificial intelligence heavyweight. This is because of the importance it has always given it over time and because a large part of the training and inference mechanics was proposed by Alphabet and its divisions, especially DeepMind. For example, the Transformer architecture, born at Google, is the foundation of today’s AI.
Google’s paradox is that they were caught offside in games that, as a team, they dominated. OpenAI failed to predict the consumer segment it saw with ChatGPT. This chatbot ultimately set the standard and path for those that came after it, including Google itself, which has been boasting about being an AI first since 2016. 2022 Press the Alphabet code red button.
Give me more AI. Chatbots, models, tools… and, above all, Google has hidden AI in all its products. Search emails in Gmail? There is Gemini. And Google Sheets? With AI you can even create macros in spreadsheets. The crown jewel is not left out either: the search engine is packed with AI like no other product.
AI-generated opinions in the search engine (AI overview) and AI mode (AI mode) were Google’s solution to a problem that had plagued the platform for years: poor search results. It was hard to find anything decent depending on what to search for, which is why AI fits so well here: it solves any doubt without reading anything else. And that’s a problem, not just for those of us who create a living content.
AI is good for search engine users, not Google. It seems like a contradiction, but it is like this: Alphabet reported a significant drop in revenue growth through search (there was hardly any difference compared to the second quarter, which was already low in reference to the first). One reason for this, according to Google, is that AI mode monetizes worse than traditional search.
Google has achieved a search engine “so good” that users don’t have to go beyond interacting with AI to find solutions. Therefore, there is less space for advertising, or less advertising value. And that puts at risk the goose that lays the golden egg for Google.
Solution: Add more ads. It is a logical argument. If you’re earning less because ads aren’t being seen, what you should do is increase your numbers. Or what’s the same: if we go from an inefficient search engine to a more or less accurate one, thanks to AI, Google will now have to retrace its steps. As Ricky Martin would say: “One step forward, Mariah,…”.
As Philip Schindler, Google’s business director, explained:
“It should be noted that the strong increase in queries in AI mode was influenced by the low monetization we were seeing in this mode.”
And he added:
“To be clear, we’re very pleased with our track record. Our ad tests have yielded promising results, and we’re now expanding both AI View and AI Mode ads to more users and more queries, with ads in multi-way conversations in international markets and the US.”
At best, at worst. Google won’t back down by removing AI from the search engine, so it must find a way to align ads with Gemini texts. It’s not easy, because seeing an ad in search results isn’t the same as an obvious product recommendation in a text that should be neutral. For AI, it’s very easy to lose credibility.
Google is not in trouble, quite the opposite: it continues to grow in double digits. The problem is that each search that goes into AI mode leaves less money than the last, and the only lever Google has is the same as always: more ads. Therefore, you run the risk of ending up where you started, a search engine oriented more toward advertisers than users.
Cover image Edited by Ivan Linares
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