Google believes that users want AI summaries in Search more than ever before. This news comes out of an AI Summit that was held in New York on Monday, where the company was asked about user preferences shifting away from “factual answers” provided by original websites to the contextual summaries provided by AI Overviews.
Google’s vice president of government affairs and public policy, Markham Erickson said that the company wants to have a “healthy ecosystem” with both AI Summaries and regular search results.
This is important because there have been many investigations done that have found that AI Summaries do drastically affect traffic for publishers. While Google is taking the info that publishers publish and putting it into AI Summaries, those users are not visiting the said website that provided that info to Google. Which is a big deal.
This question came out when asked about the new lawsuit by Rolling Stone’s parent company, Penske Media Corporation, who is suing Google over illegally using its journalism to power AI summaries and reduce traffic to its sites. Which is a pretty big deal, as far as lawsuits go. This is something that could have a huge affect on the entire industry.
Google wants a healthy ecosystem
Of course, Google isn’t going to comment on ongoing lawsuits, as no company would. But Erickson did comment on Google’s philosophy, which is having a healthy ecosystem. Essentially, a healthy mix of the AI Summaries and AI Overviews, along with the search results, which is often referred to as 10 blue links.
Erickson also commented that user preferences and what users want are also changing. So instead of “factual answers and 10 blue links, they’re increasingly wanting contextual answers and summaries.” Which is why Google is pushing so hard for AI Summaries these days. Erickson also noted that this is a dynamic space that is shifting.
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