“The grand bargain on which Google’s relationship with the open web rests — you give us articles, we give you traffic — could fall apart”
– Kevin Roose
Google searches create meaningful amounts of traffic for new sites, which in turn monetize the volume of visits they receive. That may change with Google’s new “A.I. overviews” feature, which will summarize the content within a link and possibly reduce or preempt the clickthroughs.
The result could be a loss of passive revenue for news publishers and others that rely on web referrals to power their ad-reach numbers.
Can Google Give A.I. Answers Without Breaking the Web? | THE NEW YORK TIMES | May 14, 2024 | by Kevin Roose