At the annual Google I/O developer conference, held May 14-15 in Mountain View, California, Liz Reid presented these changes, marking the start of her tenure as CEO. all things Google Search. His demonstration was part of a broader theme at the conference: AI now underpinning almost all of Google’s products, and the company only plans to accelerate this shake-up.
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The changes to Google Search have been in the works for a long time. Last year, the company reserved a section of its SearchLabs (which allows users to try new experimental features), and the question was if, or when, these features would become a permanent part of Google Search. The answer is… now (at least for the North American market).
Google created a personalized version of its Gemini AI model for these new search features but did not wish to communicate on the size of this model, its speeds or the safeguards put in place around the technology.
Competitive pressure
Google’s search overhaul comes at a time of growing criticism over what some see as a degraded search experience. For the first time in a long time, the company is feeling the pressure of competition, from the massive merger between Microsoft and OpenAI, but also from smaller companies like Perplexity, You.com and Brave which have also ridden the AI wave generative and attracted attention for the way they changed the very concept of online search, even if they have not yet gained much notoriety.
Towards a monopoly situation on the European AI market?
The changes to search also have major implications for Google’s advertising business, which accounts for the vast majority of the company’s revenue and its CEO Sundar Pichai has declined to share revenue from its generative AI experiments in any way. general. The revamped version of Google’s AI search relegates to the background the famous 10 blue links that it used to offer on the results pages. Announcements and information boxes first began to take priority at the top of Google pages; now, AI-generated overviews and categories will take up a good portion of the search space. And website publishers and content creators are worried about these changes. Well Named.
