AI is ruining search. You Google something simple, and not only do we have a list of ads to get through, but now, an AI summary. Something no one asked for. But it’s not just annoying. This AI summary is killing Google search. Companies are dying and losing millions in revenue, and many are even suing Google. In this blog, I will write about how and why Google’s AI overhaul is eating the internet alive.
Ads & AI Crowding Out Results:
So how did we get here? How did Google ruin their biggest product while trying to make it better?
This all centers around what Google calls the Search Generative Experience, or SGE. You know it as the AI Overview box. Let’s say you search for something like, “Where’s the closest Walmart?” Before, you got a map and three bulleted links with the nearest addresses. But now, you get an AI summary giving you information you already know, or worse, something totally unhelpful: “A quick online search for Walmart near me will provide a list.” Thanks, Google.
The top third of the screen is now just this AI summary. And that’s before we even talk about the ads. Google has quietly expanded the number of sponsored links at the top over recent years. Where there used to be one or two small, clearly labeled ads, now there can be four massive ad results.
Combine the huge AI block and the sponsored listings, and it’s not unusual that you have to scroll once or even twice just to reach the first real search result. It feels like Google’s own features are hogging their own results, actively crowding out the answers you actually need. The proportion of space dedicated to useful information is shrinking, and the effort you need to get to it is increasing.
Dangerous and Unhelpful AI Overviews:
But despite this, that’s when the AI is even correct. The AI Overviews are notorious for spitting out dangerous nonsense.
One of the most infamous examples was when Google’s AI summary advised a user that drinking two quarts of urine would help them pass kidney stones quickly. This is because Google’s AI is just an LLM, a large language model. It’s pulling the most likely next response, much of which comes from Reddit.
To be clear, Reddit is extremely useful to find real fixes or information… if you’re a human who can filter the good from the bad. But some of these should never have made it to the front page. It’s hard to trust anything Google says when much of what it very confidently gives you is blatantly wrong, harmful, or dangerous.
Worst of all, it’s almost impossible to switch this off. You can bypass it by adding “-AI” to the search or adding “udm=14” to the URL. Someone even turned this into an entire page, which I’d highly recommend. But these are just workarounds or band-aid fixes.
Traffic and Revenue Collapse:
For many, AI is here to stay. But while this might be an annoyance for us, it’s actually ruining the lives of many. Many websites are now reporting dramatic drops in traffic and click-through rates. Instead of clicking through to a page, many users will view the information pulled from that page and never click at all. Pages where AI summaries appear are now seeing this drop by 35%.
Millions in Losses and Stock Collapse:
And this is huge. Imagine a business’s customers dropping by 35% or more, it would be devastating. For online publishers, it’s killing them. The Sun, a major news site, saw their monthly unique visitors from Google fall by 40% in a single year, dropping from 134 million down to 80 million. Chegg, the education-tech site, watched their organic traffic crater, leading to a 24% drop in revenue in one quarter, a net loss of $6.1 million, and a staggering 90% collapse in its stock value. Their CEO publicly blamed Google’s AI for “unfairly” using their content to keep students on Google.
But Google doesn’t seem bothered. In fact, they say it’s the opposite. They claim AI Overviews drive “valuable traffic to publishers” and that usage is increasing. But that’s not what the data is showing. Google is taking content created by others, summarizing it to keep users on Google, and destroying said creators’ business model in the process.
Losing the “Don’t Be Evil” Focus:
This is exactly what led us to the problem Google is facing today. But how did we even get here? Why is Google destroying their own business?
Things used to be so much simpler. Back in the early 2000s, Google was fast, efficient, non-bloated, and just good. In 1999, one of Google’s ads said, “No news feed, no links to sponsors, no ads, no distractions. Nothing but a fast-loading search site.”
The company’s original motto was “Don’t be evil,” and its internal guiding principle was “Focus on the user and all else will follow.” But that’s changed. Google’s search engine became more and more ad-focused and objectively worse.
And we need look no further than their own staff. Ben Gomes, the past head of Search at Google, said in an internal email: “I think we are getting too close to the money. I think it is good for us to aspire to query growth and to aspire to more users. But I think we are getting too involved with ads for the good of the product and company.”
Shashi Thakur, the past vice president of Engineering, Search and Discover, had similar opinions: “I think finance folks are running like chickens with heads cut off. I guess the free ride is ending, and this is the first time they have to figure out how our business actually works.”
For context, at this time in 2019, Google had declared a “code yellow” due to concern it might not meet its revenue goals that quarter, goals that had just been up forever. These internal warnings were ignored, and Google’s search results slowly became more and more monetized.
For decades, Google has been the market leader in search. They’ve had the monopoly, over 90% of market share, for a very long time. But it wasn’t just about money, it was something else.
The ChatGPT Threat:
For the first time, Google had a major competitor that threatened its entire business model. If you open up ChatGPT, you can type in a simple question, and it gives you a synthesized summary, often with the source article right underneath. Not only that, it summarizes it. It’s a fast, conversational way to get answers.
And the data doesn’t lie. In a survey of 5,000 US consumers, 55% of them were already using AI for conducting research, up to 47% for product recommendations, and 39% for online shopping. And this is growing fast. Look at the data from Adobe: traffic from generative AI sources increased by 1,200% compared to a few months ago. In that same period, traffic to travel, leisure, and hospitality sites, like hotels, increased by 1,700% from AI sources.
Google knew they were losing ground. Instead of leading, they were now chasing ChatGPT. They had to prove to the world that they were still the leader in AI. So, they went all-in, pushing their AI Overview feature hard into their most valuable product: Google Search. But, as you would guess, in their race to catch up, they ended up sabotaging the very thing that made them dominant in the first place.
They took a product that was already bloated with ads and then slapped an unhelpful, sometimes dangerous, AI summary on top of it. People use ChatGPT to search for a summarized answer. People use Google Search for a list of results. And Alphabet, the parent company, is trying to turn the latter into the former.
But people don’t want that. This brings us to a bit of a paradox. It might be okay for ChatGPT to do this, but for Google, this business model was basically their entire business.
The Advertising Dependency:
GPT makes money from premium services, like Pro and Plus. Google makes money from advertising. In 2023, advertising made up over 76% of Google’s revenue, which was over $230 billion. Much of this is search ads. But many people aren’t clicking them anymore. They aren’t scrolling and going through pages. They arrive at Google, read the AI summary, then leave. Yet Google is going all in on AI, not just for search, but for their other business parts like Drive, too.
They’re cramming AI into anything that will stick, regardless of whether it works or not. And everyone, users, content creators, publishers, and businesses, has had enough.
Competitors Gain Ground:
Google’s claim that “people use Search more with AI and are more satisfied” rang hollow immediately. The fact that users needed technical workarounds to use a search engine normally was absurd. But many aren’t putting up with it. Which brings us to a big problem for Google.
Google’s market share is starting to drop. They’ve declined to 85%, which is still a lot. But Google doesn’t drop in search. Never. Until now.
Competitors like Bing and DuckDuckGo have begun gaining ground because they offer a cleaner, faster experience that doesn’t force you to scroll past AI nonsense to find an organic result.
Think about that. Bing has been a joke for almost its entire life. Yet now, it’s looking a lot more appealing. DuckDuckGo, in particular, is good for an AI-free, ad-less experience.
Lawsuits over Content Use:
Publishers and content creators are no longer staying quiet. While users are beginning to look for alternatives, the people who rely on Google traffic for their livelihoods are now seeking justice. AI features are diverting huge amounts of traffic and affiliate revenue from their sites, so they are taking Google to court.
Chegg filed a U.S. federal antitrust lawsuit. They claim that Google’s AI Overviews drastically reduced their traffic and revenue, and that Google is pressuring them to allow their content to be used by the AI without compensation.
Penske Media Corporation, which owns major publications like Rolling Stone, Variety, and Billboard, has taken similar action. They filed a U.S. federal antitrust and content use lawsuit, arguing that Google is using their journalism inside AI summaries without paying for it, and that this has caused a significant drop in traffic to their sites.
This fight is not limited to the United States. The Independent Publishers Alliance filed an antitrust complaint with the European Commission, arguing that Google’s AI Overviews unfairly suppress independent publishers by elevating its own summaries above original reporting.
The FIEG, the Italian federation of newspaper publishers, sent a complaint to Italy’s communications regulator. They are calling for an investigation, arguing that AI Overviews are a traffic killer, that they harm media diversity, and that the practice may violate EU rules.
Conclusion:
Everyone is sick of Google’s AI experiment. The pressure is mounting on Google to refine or pull back the AI summaries. And Google seems to realize something isn’t working. Recently, Google has been testing changes; for instance, sometimes the AI section only appears if you click a “Generate AI Response” button, rather than automatically cluttering the screen. They also insist they’re “constantly innovating” to improve search.
But they still have to deal with the lawsuits and declining market share. Google is caught in a trap of its own making: it is financially dependent on the ads that clutter the page, and it seems obsessed with implementing AI features to compete with ChatGPT and other AI.
But the result is a broken search experience that satisfies no one. And with ChatGPT potentially adding ads, they might also be coming for their advertising revenue, too. For a company whose name became a verb for “search,” there should be no greater incentive to get this right.
Hopefully, Google can return to their founding idea: “Focus on the user and all else will follow.“
FAQs:
1. Why does Google Search feel worse now?
Because ads and AI summaries push real results farther down.
2. What is the AI Overview box?
It is Google’s auto-generated summary that often replaces real links.
3. Why are publishers losing traffic?
Users read Google’s summary instead of clicking the actual site.
4. Are AI Overviews accurate?
Not always, and sometimes the answers are dangerously wrong.
5. Why is Google adding AI to everything?
They are trying to compete with ChatGPT and protect their business model.
6. Are people switching to other search engines?
Yes, engines like Bing and DuckDuckGo are gaining users.