Google played catch-up yesterday as it opened I/O with a two-hour keynote you should watch at double-speed – at least until you get to a new search feature called “AI Overviews.” Stop there. Rewind and watch it carefully. If you have made a living in the link-based, SEO-driven-content-creation/publishing-world, then life, as you know it, is about to end. Said more simply: “AI Overviews is the death of link-based search.”
Those of you who have been around the block a few times may think I’m being overly dramatic (or just taking a cheap, easy shot at our friends in Mountain View). Guilty. I am being overly dramatic because within the context of the AI industry’s broader ambitions, it’s clear that AI agents designed to quickly deliver precise information will fundamentally disrupt traditional search. These agents won’t prioritize crediting creators, visiting websites, or clicking on ads; instead, they will prioritize profits for Google.
Watching the video, I could not help but think about all of the information Google has scraped and organized from the public web over the years. We were so happy to pay them to do this! In its original form, it benefited everyone, although (with few exceptions) no one benefited as much as Alphabet. With the advent of AI bots designed to do our bidding (controlled by a profit-centric tech giant), content creators and publishers are unlikely to prosper.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Google has an AI-powered mechanism to remunerate content creators and publishers, a profit-sharing plan that will make money for those who actually create the content they are aggregating, a new way to compensate… sure, I’ll keep dreaming.
Author’s note: This is not a sponsored post. I am the author of this article and it expresses my own opinions. I am not, nor is my company, receiving compensation for it. This work was created with the assistance of various generative AI models.