Every article on The AI Downside filed under AI Search — 4 and counting.
A small group of signed-out users opened Google this week and found no Search button — just three AI shortcuts where it used to be. Google runs thousands of A/B tests, and most go nowhere. This one touches the most conservative surface it owns, which is why it matters.
AI Overviews were meant to save you a click. Increasingly they cost you one, plus the time spent working out whether the summary is true.
AI answers are built from pages that depend on visits to survive. The maths of that arrangement does not close.
The AI industry has decided search is broken and it will fix it. In the process it keeps rebuilding search's oldest problems from scratch.
