Is it even in their best interest to make it work? I’m sure the normal person would start to ignore the AI answer and scroll down to see the first page of ads and then find the results.

I think you’re wrong. The normal person would almost certainly take the quick summary answer so long as it doesn’t sound too absurd.

Most people use google to answer a question. If that question is answered immediately at the top of the page, mission accomplished

Hmm looks like I need to run to the store and get some glue for tonight's dinner.

Is there a way to turn it off other than an obscure query parameter in the URL?

An honest release of this feature would have a “turn it off” button right next to it and I’m not seeing one.

We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas!

conveniently the same problems are present in gpt4, but conveniently ignored as that product is from a revolutionary startup

Gpt4 doesn’t show me these summaries and answers even though I never asked and just searched.

This is just another example of google sucking and being kind of stupid now.