The Google Search homepage is arguably the most visited page on the internet — a clean, minimalist gateway to the boundless expanse of online information.
From that humble search bar, Google grants users the power to explore virtually any website, uncover facts in an instant, and tap into the collective knowledge of humanity. Its reach is limited only by how far its web crawlers can travel and the blazing speed of its indexing — both of which are unmatched.
With this approach, Google redefined how we browse the web.
In doing so, it rendered traditional web directories nearly obsolete. But in their place, it empowered websites of all kinds to thrive — making visibility not just possible, but scalable.
Now, Google is taking things further by putting an AI-powered tool right into the search engine, in a bold attempt to reshape the search experience once again.
While it does deliver on its promise of faster, smarter answers, it comes with a dark side.
In its quest to reinvent search, Google introduced “AI Overviews” — those concise, AI-generated blurbs that appear at the top of many search results pages.
These summaries aim to answer users’ queries instantly, often before they even scroll down. Pulled from websites across the internet, these quick answers frequently eliminate the need to click through to the original source.
If users can get everything they need right on Google Search, why would they bother wasting time scrolling or visiting websites? So confident was Google that this feature would transform search, they called its launch "one of the most successful in Search’s history."
But Google didn’t stop there.
They doubled down with something bigger: 'AI Mode.'
Unlike AI Overviews, which still sit on a traditional search page, AI Mode replaces the entire search experience. It’s Google’s answer to AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Anthropic — a conversational AI that breaks down complex questions, runs multiple queries at once, and returns smart, synthesized responses.
Google is boldly reshaping search — and with its unmatched reach across the web, mobile, and beyond, it’s poised to control the future of how people find information.
The bad thing is that, websites may not be part of that future.
Read: Google Expands AI Overviews Feature, While Introducing An 'AI Mode' To Its Search Engine
Using AI on Google Search feels fast, free, and almost eerily good at giving users exactly what they want.
It doesn’t just summarize information — it organizes, reasons, and even interacts. Ask about a product, and it creates a curated list. Aska complex question, and it intelligently breaks it down into manageable parts.
The goal? To elevate search to an entirely new level. But in doing so, it drastically reduces the need for users to ever leave the AI interface.
This shift rewrites the rules of the web — a web where, for decades, links were the lifeblood.
Links connected everything, weaving a dynamic, navigable network of information. In fact, Google itself was built on this foundation: indexing, ranking, and turning those links into a global gateway of knowledge.
The implications are profound — and deeply troubling.
With AI’s rise, links are quietly being demoted to mere footnotes, buried at the bottom of AI-generated responses like academic citations.
If Google’s AI-generated answer is "good enough," why would people bother clicking through to the site that actually did the work?
Websites are no longer destinations to visit. Instead, they’ve become data sources — raw material for Google’s AI to consume, digest, and repackage… all without sending users to the original creators.
The result? A massive loss of traffic — even for previously top-ranked websites.
Brands lose visibility and authority. Publishers lose credibility. And Google takes credit for everyone else’s content.
For years, Google’s success depended on a symbiotic relationship: websites created content, Google indexed and ranked it, and users clicked through. Everyone in the ecosystem benefited.
But with AI Mode, that delicate balance is breaking down.
Less traffic means fewer ad impressions, lower affiliate revenue, and shrinking monetization opportunities for creators.
Less incentive to produce content means fewer original resources for AI to draw from — slowly starving the very web that fuels it.
Meanwhile, more time spent inside Google’s own AI-driven interface means the company captures even more attention, user data, and — inevitably — advertising dollars.
It’s a shift from discovery to containment. From open ecosystem to a walled garden.
And it begs the uncomfortable question:
If Google no longer needs to send people to the web… what happens to the web?
AI Mode isn’t just a feature upgrade for Google Search.
It’s a paradigm shift.
Google is automating away the act of visiting the web — putting websites in the backseat.
In the race for AI dominance, Google may be putting the open web itself in peril.
With AI Mode, Google exemplifies a broader trend in generative AI: summarization over exploration, synthesis over sourcing.
It’s faster, slicker, more efficient. But it obscures the origin of information and reduces the visibility of human voices.
Where once Google encouraged discovery, now it offers convenience. Where it once sent traffic outward, it now keeps users in. The web becomes an API, not a destination.
Google is no longer just pointing people to knowledge — it’s becoming the knowledge engine itself.
And in doing so, it risks cannibalizing the very ecosystem that made it powerful.
This isn’t just about one company’s product strategy — it’s about the survival of an internet built on open access and mutual visibility. If Google — the gatekeeper to the web — decides it no longer needs to send traffic to publishers, what happens to the incentive to create?
The world has collectively populate the web in the course of decades. And in the era where Google is reshaping how people discover new things on the web, the web as we know, will not disappear overnight. But overtime, Google's aggressive strategy to push this lucrative business forward, could slowly fade the World Wide Web behind the glass wall of an AI interface.
While AI may be a leap forward for users seeking instant answers, it could be a death sentence for the websites providing them.
For years, Google has reigned as the undisputed ruler of the internet, standing tall with unshakable confidence.
Since its founding in 1998, the tech giant revolutionized online search, replacing outdated directories with an advanced algorithm that indexed the web, making information accessible with just a few keystrokes. This dominance turned Google into a powerhouse, amassing wealth and influence that overshadowed nearly every entity with an online presence.
But then came OpenAI’s ChatGPT—a seemingly small but incredibly disruptive force. It didn’t take long before Google started considering ChatGPT as a threat—a "code red" moment.
More than just a fleeting innovation, the rise of large language models (LLMs) signaled an existential threat to Google’s very foundation — search.
What followed was nothing short of a technological arms race: an all-out sprint between an internet titan and a disruptive force powerful enough to reshape how the world communicate with computers.
Yet if there’s one player capable of adapting at scale, it’s Google. With vast resources and global infrastructure, the shift to AI isn’t just possible — it’s inevitable. And the result? Nothing less than a seismic disruption.
Google is good for many, and bad for the rest at the same time.
When it empowers the masses, it quietly undermines the very web it built upon. For many, it's indispensable. For others, it's quietly devastating.
Long story short, AI in Google Search is good for users, bad for websites, and perfect for Google.