Artificial Intelligence

Google’s Gambit and the future of the open web

By Eric Benjamin Seufert

In this episode of the podcast, I examine Google’s Gambit: its effort to transition Search from a distribution intermediary to an engagement sink. Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode products seek to retain users in the Search experience, rather than forwarding them to external destinations. Many publishers claim that their inbound traffic from Google Search has plummeted, with expectations that this traffic will eventually decline to zero.

I’ve described Google’s ambitions with AI Overviews and AI Mode as Google’s Gambit: an attempt to utterly reform the core Search experience through AI functionality while not alienating users. In this episode, I unpack Google’s motivations behind this gambit and attempt to outline its broader impact on the open web. I also consider this product strategy within the wider context of consumer engagement shifting from web-based content to LLM-empowered chatbots.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

  • INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.
  • ContextSDK. ContextSDK uses over 200 smartphone signals to detect a user’s real-world context, allowing apps to deliver perfectly timed push notifications and in-app offers.

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