Google thinks it can have AI summaries and a healthy web, too

Google's vice president of government affairs and public policy, Markham Erickson, defended the company's use of AI summaries in search results during an AI summit in New York. Erickson acknowledged that user preferences are shifting away from "factual answers" provided by original websites towards the contextual summaries provided by AI Overviews, which appear at the top of the main page of search results. However, Erickson stated that Google's goal is to maintain a "healthy ecosystem" with both AI summaries and regular search results, sometimes referred to as 10 blue links. The company believes that this approach will serve the ecosystem well, as the 10 blue links have historically directed users to billions of publications around the world free of charge. Erickson's comments come in response to a lawsuit filed by Rolling Stone's parent company, Penske Media Corporation, which alleges that the use of AI summaries leads to a decline in search traffic and revenue for online publishers. Erickson did not address the specifics of the lawsuit but emphasized Google's desire to provide both AI summaries and traditional search results to meet the evolving preferences of users.