Google says AI search will keep sending traffic to the web

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 21:20

   So the News Media Alliance, after AI Mode was announced yesterday, I would say they're very upset. Here's a statement from the president of the News Media Alliance. Links were the last redeeming quality of search that gave publishers traffic and revenue. Now Google takes content by force and uses it with no return, no economic return. That's the definition of theft. And they You go on to say the DOJ's lawsuits must address it.

2. 21:42

   That's pretty furious. That's not a negotiation, right? That's a, we just want this to stop. How do you respond to that very loud set of people who say, yeah, okay, maybe it's growing somewhere, but for us, it's crushing our businesses? You know, first of all, through all the products, I mean, AI mode is going to have sources and, you know, we're very committed as a direction, as a product direction to make sure.

3. 22:08

   I think part of why people come to Google is to experience that breadth of the web and go in the direction they want to, right? So I view us as giving more context. Yes, there are certain questions which may get answers, but overall, that's the pattern we see today, right? And if anything, over the last year, it's clear to us the breadth of where we are sending people to is increasing. And so I expect that to be true with AI mode as well.

4. 22:34

   But if it was increasing, wouldn't they be less angry with you? You're always going to have areas where people are robustly debating value exchanges, et cetera, right? Like app developers and platforms that's not on the web, et cetera, right? It's inherently, you know, there's always going to be, when you're running a platform, these debates. I would challenge, I think, more than any other company.

5. 22:56

   we think about. We prioritize sending traffic to the web. No one sends traffic to the web in the way we do. I look at other companies, newer, emerging companies. They openly talk about it as something they are not going to do. We are the only ones which make it a high priority, agonize, and so on. Look, we'll engage, and we've always engaged. There are going to be debates through it all, but we are committed to, You know, I've said this before, everything we do, you will see us five years from now sending a lot of traffic out to the web.

6. 23:30

   I think that's the product direction we are committed to. I think it's what users look for when they come to Google. And the nature of it will evolve. But, you know, I'm confident that that's the direction we will continue taking. Is there public data that shows that AI overviews and AI mode actually send more traffic out than the previous search engine results page? We're definitely sending traffic to a wider range of sources, publishers.

7. 23:55

   And because, just like we've done over 25 years, we've been through the same with featured snippets. You know, it's higher quality referral traffic too. So, right, and we can observe it because the time when people spend, that's one metric. And there are other ways by which we measure quality of our outbound traffic is also increasing. So, and overall, through this transition, I think generally AI always are also growing.

8. 24:18

   and, you know, the growth compounds over time. So whenever we work through these transitions, it ends up, post it, that's how Google has worked for 25 years and, you know, and we end up sending more traffic over time. So that's how I would expect all this to play out. So why do you think that there is so much general economic turmoil on that side of the house, right? If you're sending more traffic and the goal over time is to make sure that that works out, we're a year into it, right?

9. 24:46

   And it doesn't seem to have gotten better over there. No, look, we are sending traffic to a broader source of people. People may be, you know, surfacing more content, looking at more content. So somebody individually may see less. I mean, there are all kinds of, at the end of the day, we are reflecting what users want, right? You know, if you do the wrong thing, users won't use their product, go somewhere else, right?

10. 25:09

    And so you have all these dynamics underway. And I think we have genuinely, you know, we took a long time designing AI overviews, and we are constantly iterating in a way that we prioritize, you know, sources and sending traffic to the web. I mean, my criticism of this industry, just to be clear, is that everyone's addicted to Google, and it would be better if they weren't. But they're addicted to Google, right?

11. 25:31

    And they're feeling it. And then on top of that, you see, you've mentioned several times, like overall queries are increasing on Google surfaces, but they're changing, right? They're getting longer. They're getting more complicated. AI mode might walk you through several steps. Maybe some people are searching on TikTok now. EtiQ on the stand in the trial the other day said, search in Safari for the last month dropped for the first time in 22 years.

12. 25:56

    That's a big stat. Obviously, your stock price was affected by it. There was a statement. Is that trend bearing out that the standard Google search is dropping from devices and different kinds of searches are increasing? No, look, we've been very clear. We are seeing overall query growth in search. You know, it looks... But have you actually seen the drop in Safari? We have a comprehensive view of how we look at data across the board.

13. 26:19

    There's a lot of... There can be a lot of noise in search data. But everything we see tells us we are seeing query growth, including across Apple's devices and platforms. And specifically, you know, I think we quantified the query growth from AI overviews. And what's healthy is that the query growth is continuing to grow over time. This is what I've said before. It feels very far from a zero-sum game to me.

14. 26:44

    I said this last year. It's interesting we spoke about TikTok, right? Think about, like, how profound a new product TikTok was. How has YouTube done since TikTok has come, right? You could ask all these questions there. Is it that TikTok comes and YouTube has grown, right? Like, you know, and so I think what we always underestimate in these moments is people are engaging more, doing more with it. We are improving our products.

15. 27:11

    So that's how I would think about these moments.