I remember when Google first burst onto the scene. I even shook Sergey Brin’s hand at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in 1999. I can still hear his charming Russian accent as he told me:

"Gooogle iz going to be a verybig deal."

He wasn’t wrong.

Google became a “verybig deal” because it offered the best deal—to both users and content providers. Prior to Google, the search engines were punishing webmasters (those “damn spammers”). Their engineers tightly clutched to their academic purity and failed to create user-friendly tools to give searchers what they needed.

Then Google showed up with smarter results, a cleaner interface, and a more inclusive stance on web content—they welcomed it all. Their thinking? “You can’t really spam Google.” (Ah, the innocence.)

So, Why the History Lesson?

Because the wheel has turned.
Google is now hostile to content creators and, with the advent of ChatGPT (and other AI engines) Google Search no longer delivers the best experience to users. And worse?
They know it.

Behind the scenes, they’re panicking. Want proof?
Just look at CEO Sundar Pichai’s stammering response to a direct question in regards to how the unit economics of search are changing as Google shifts to AI-driven results, given that AI queries likely cost more to serve than traditional ones.

Question: Do you have a point of view on ad revenue per AI query?

"You know we already with AI overviews um