Error 404: Web not found, killed by Google’s AI search

It’s been 24 years since Google Search became the dominant tool to find everything on the internet, but now Google is upending the system it helped engineer by injecting AI into the equation.

Now companies everywhere, including Southeast Asia, are very nervous about what this means for their business.

“There’s generally panic,” says Vahe Arabian, the founder of State of Digital Publishing (SODP) and SODP Media. But more than just panic, he says most people are interested in learning what the new norm is going to be about.

“They’re trying to get ahead. They’re looking for clarity,” he tells Tech in Asia.

The reason for the current level of panic and curiosity started on May 14, 2024, when Google rolled out AI Overviews, a new version of its search engine that gives users an AI-generated synopsis to their query, instead of the usual lists of web pages and links.

The response from the tech community was immediate.

Many industry researchers, who had already been monitoring AI Overviews – previously known as Google’s Search Generative Experience – warned the feature would kill web traffic, reduce revenue from advertising, and make it much harder for users to find smaller businesses online.

According to tech research firm Gartner, by 2026, traffic generated by traditional search engines will drop by 25%, with the majority of traffic going to AI chatbots and other virtual agents. ChatGPT has been setting new records in web traffic on almost a monthly basis and saw over 2.5 billion visits in June.

Advertising, which is often directly correlated to web traffic, is also expected to take a hit, with many industry insiders commenting on the irony of Google’s self-sabotaging technology. The company’s ad revenue grew to US$237.8 billion in 2023.

Raptive, an internet media consultancy, estimated AI Overviews could cost the industry US$2 billion a year in ad revenue.

What is the level of impact on businesses?

Pramod Rao, founder and CEO of Threado, a US-based developer of AI chatbots, thinks Google is putting user experience ahead of monetization due to the current market demand.

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