Google's shift toward AI-generated search results, displacing the familiar list of links, is rewiring the internet — and could accelerate the decline of the 30+-year-old World Wide Web.
Why it matters: A world where Google answers most questions in a single machine voice makes online life more convenient — and duller.
But there's even deeper damage likely to be wreaked by Google's shift.
These humans contributed with a variety of goals: to burnish their reputations and win status, to help others out, or to meet like-minded people.
The bottom line: If Google doesn't manage that decline with care, AI could end up not only eating the web but swallowing its own sustenance.
Why it matters: A world where Google answers most questions in a single machine voice makes online life more convenient — and duller.
- The change also threatens to cut into Google's revenue from search ads, and starve future AIs of the human data they'll need.
- That means the world's most popular search engine will answer many or most queries with a paragraph or two written by generative AI.
- This system still relies on web-based information, but it doesn't nourish the creators of that information with users' visits.
But there's even deeper damage likely to be wreaked by Google's shift.
- By making it even less inviting for humans to contribute to the web's collective pool of knowledge, Google's summary answers could also leave its own and everyone else's AI tools with less accurate, less timely, and less interesting information.
- She pointed her phone at a busted turntable and said she didn't know what was wrong or even how to begin fixing it.
- The long thing kept sliding off the records instead of playing them. But she didn't know its name, so how could she even begin to write a search query?
- Google's AI told her it was called a tone arm. It identified the turntable's make and model, and instructed her how to fix it.
- Back then, you'd have to read a few web pages yourself, or maybe you'd go to some enthusiasts' forum or blog to ask your question.
- You'd receive a welter of cantankerous but knowledgeable replies — veined with a little condescension, maybe, but also plenty of personality.
- It's hard to see why people would bother contributing their expertise if their posts don't get visited by seekers of information and instead just become fodder for AI to regurgitate.
- That process is the only reason today's AI is able to know anything about anything.
These humans contributed with a variety of goals: to burnish their reputations and win status, to help others out, or to meet like-minded people.
- Money has always been a big factor, too. But key feeders of the data pool shaping today's AI — like Wikipedia, Reddit and the remnants of the old blogosphere of the 2000s — were built without much of a profit incentive.
- If Google answers most of the world's questions using a single AI voice, there's that much less incentive for anyone to share their expertise and creativity on the web.
- That means plenty of web traffic will continue to work the way it always has, the search giant argues.
- Facebook, Twitter and their competitors diverted much of the energy that built the web into conversations that were taking place in giant, privately owned malls rather than public space.
The bottom line: If Google doesn't manage that decline with care, AI could end up not only eating the web but swallowing its own sustenance.
- "In a world where everyone gets answers and doesn't have to click on links, the biggest loser is Google," Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas told Axios Tuesday at BFD San Francisco.
