Many new features were seen during the Google I/O presentation. Two hours is a long time. The company showed so many advances, all related to artificial intelligence, that it left Android as the second course, for the second day of the event. This is something we’ve never seen before. Google has been said to be an AI-driven company since 2016, but this year it was seen with particular clarity.
The announcements were of all kinds, from the new Gemini application to the new image creation systems, with Image 3, or video, with Veo. In addition, the integration of artificial intelligence with products such as Gmail, Google Photos or WorkSpace is not left out.
But there has been one change that has gone somewhat unnoticed and is really important: a change in the search engine. The impact was such that Google created a new filter, which works in a similar way to the one usually used for photographs or news. In this case, the filter will only show web links. And one could say, but doesn’t Google already show web links by default? Yes and no.
AI takes control
In the presentation keynote, Google showed AI Overviews, i.e. overviews of the answers to the queries we ask, created with artificial intelligence. These additions appear by default at the top of the search engine, just like extracts, which give us, for example, the result of a football match when we search for it.
Basically, in many cases Google doesn’t search for an answer and display the link or extract text from a website. What Google will do is solve this question with artificial intelligence create an answer expressly for us. In the future, it will even be possible to modulate the system language or the length of responses.
This is research in the Age of Gemini. #GoogleIO pic.twitter.com/JxldNjbqyn
-Google Google) May 14, 2024
This represents a big change from what Google has offered until now, because It relies on its main livelihood, that of advertising and traffic generated by the search engine. It is true that this cannot change, because it would risk people starting to use ChatGPT or TikTok, for example, as common search places.
In fact, video apps have been a threat to Google for a long time. More and more people are searching for things on platforms like YouTube or Instagram, so the company decided that if video is important, it would implement it, but in its own way.
And you will also be able to ask questions by video, directly in the search. Future. #GoogleIO pic.twitter.com/zFVu8yOWI1
-Google Google) May 14, 2024
As seen in the video above, we will soon be able to create a video of a question we ask ourselves and ask the question out loud. We will upload this video to Google servers and the search engine itself will offer us an answer, after processing and understanding the video and the question asked.
A new filter
These previews will be more and more numerous, and will appear in more and more results, which would condition the presence of links, already well hidden among product purchase boxes, advertisements, Wikipedia summaries, etc. For this, he created a filter with which the user can directly consult the list of results of a question. With a few specific announcements, but in a much more direct way.
This movement was already noticed last year, when Google explained that artificial intelligence would change the number of products that would be used, and the search engine was no exception. But it was not until 2024 that we could see how it began to be applied, radically changing the way research is carried out.
This new feature is now available in the United States, although it has not yet been activated in the rest of the world, but it will arrive eventually. The impact this could have on media outlets that rely on Google traffic could be enormous, especially if people choose not to use this filter. However, some Google officials say users tend to click more on links that appear in these AI-created responses, so that would be a benefit, not a problem, for media outlets.
New results with AI
Free Android
Reality seems to say the opposite, even today. Jake Boly, a trainer from Austin, spent three years designing and building a sneaker review website. Last year, its traffic on Google dropped 96 percent. Google cites his page in AI-generated responses about shoes, but people read Google’s summary and no longer visit his site, according to Jake.
The future
But these changes will not be the most important. In the future, The Astra Project will directly change the way we search. This system allows you to use a camera to interact with the environment, similar to what OpenAI showed with ChatGPT 4o. This will be the evolution of Gemini Live.
If this trend continues, many creators will not be incentivized to create open content, and Google will no longer have the data with which it powers its search engine and, now, also its artificial intelligence. This could mean the end of the Internet as we know it and lead to a new, more opaque and more expensive version.
