I'm surprised to see so many comments in this thread criticizing Google for not milking more money out of their AI research sooner. Not being a shareholder, I'm pretty happy with how they catalyzed the modern AI revolution and have worked on very hard and meaningful problems like protein folding.
People can be negative and critical for no reason. In this case, I think criticism is due because Google's failure to productize has lead them to a potential existential disaster. Most of their revenue depends on search and there being an ecosystem of websites to link to and display even more of their ads. Generative AI is an existential risk to their current search interface, the ability to insert ads into that experience and there even being any ad-supported websites with free content to link to.
With the reports that Samsung may switch to Bing, you could quickly see an exodus in users over to chat search. It wouldn't take much lost revenue to implode Google's business model and the business model of every ad-supported site on the internet.
> and there being an ecosystem of websites to link to and display even more of their ads.
Regardless of the change in the interface, the websites aren't going anywhere. Maybe they'd be more tailored for LLMs to parse than humans.
> Generative AI is an existential risk to their current search interface,
I don't think so. It'd be easy to pivot to a different interface if it gains popularity after the initial hype. There are still a lot of monetizable queries that people use Search for, and won't use LLMs.
> the ability to insert ads into that experience and there even being any ad-supported websites with free content to link to.
It'd be easy to insert ads in LLM responses. I think LLMs will be a good thing for Google Ads. Right now, people hate ads on web because they are obnoxious and are competing for attention. Inserting ads in LLM responses will much less distracting and valuable.
Ask Google Search chat which TV should I buy based on my criteria, and Google could suggest the top brands, and "ads" for where you could buy it. For example: "there is a promotion going on at your local BestBuy for this TV" or whatever. They have this info in the Shopping tab.
Fair. ChatGPT is definitely the most serious event in Google's long and utterly dominant history of web search. Samsung is definitely using ChatGPT as a negotiating tactic with Google. I assume that ad revenue share is part of the arrangement. There's no way that Bing Ads could match the amount that Google Ads pays out to Samsung. This whole space is moving excitingly fast, but it's still too early to claim that anyone has "won" the space. If I had to bet who had the most advanced and most used AI service 5 years from now, I would definitely bet on Google.
