I won't be able to use their AI results if they are, personally. If I ask the question "what is the best tool for doing x" and I can't trust that the answer is going to be the truth according to all available information, then the AI is useless or worse, misleading. If google is unbiased, and only highlights paid advertiser mentions, no one will pay. I'd only accept this if it was a clear separation of LLM response and ads in a sidebar or something similar. Other people may not care. Many happily read politically affiliated news knowing that their opinions and actions may be influenced by a media source.

This is not an elephant in the room, this is so obvious and discussed all the time. What else is Google going to do, give up their one and only goose that lays the golden eggs?

Regular search being replaced with AI search means regular search (with ads) being replaced with AI search (with ads).

The benefit of AI search will be that it’s much better “integrated” in the answer, aka even harder to detect.

The method is already public for some time now. I bookmarked it since I share it a lot:

https://research.google/blog/mechanism-design-for-large-lang...

It's the same. There are slots, there's bidding, there're bidders. Same ad model, evolved for AI era.

That's the real question and it's not hypothetical. Google already adjusts organic rankings based on advertiser relationships in ways that aren't documented. With AI Mode the surface area for that kind of influence is much larger and much less visible. A search result you can inspect. A synthesized answer you can't.

Of course. Just look at the SEO industry Google created. You can't search for anything without a full page of sponsored/SEO bullshit, and everyone agrees it's precisely why Google results are less relevant today than 10 years ago. But here we are, this is exactly the same thing. We used to search with a term, Google monetized that. We now search with a sentence, do you think Google's gonna leave that cash on the table?

That will be fun because it's illegal to accept money to promote a product without indication that you have done so. The FTC requires "clear and conspicuous disclosure" for such endorsements.

Will Google choose to negatively impact its bottom line for the sake of giving their users a higher quality experience?

No. It's not 2005 anymore.

All signs point to yes. It’s Google’s profit center.

Even if it's not right now, it's hard not seeing this happening at some point

... Yes, people talk about that.

Not just their customers.

Their entire ideology. An LLM is the perfect propaganda technology, the more people outsource their thinking to them, the easier they will be for Big Corporate to control.

It's crazy to me that AI developments have such a big uncritical following from people that claim to be pro-freedom, especially around these parts. The end goal is and always has been enslavement to capital.

it’s fair to be skeptical. But then again we already know that this wasn’t the case with search results. So not sure why we would assume it is this time around.

The truth is brought to you by the highest bidder. Individuals, companies and nation states already pay for public relations. If Google offered them a service they'd pay good money.

Already has. I asked yesterday a question on different types of graphics cards vs power consumption, I and it asked me if I’d like links to buy some graphics cards

What about political ads? Will the AI lie about news to further the interests of Google's patrons?

Obviously.

for sure, i guess this is one of the experiments that confirms that would work https://openai.com/index/where-the-goblins-came-from/

This is the problem with the black box model. These adCompanies control what people see. People don't know if they can trust the generated slop.

It is the end of the open web. People need to wake up and realise what full Evil is being planned here. Google tried this before, e. g. AMP and what not.

This never occurred to traditional search results so highly doubt they’ll start now.