They are also trying to reduce workers in search, etc, somewhat through the trained LLMs so the other idea is that they have lower costs per user.
I don't think many people will pay monthly fees or will want to pay them for each platform they use which is why they all tend to do so many questionable integration attempts to try to get users to not want to use a separate LLM of their choice in a browser instead.
Gemini Pro requires a monthly subscription.
Seems like a pretty straightforward business model.
I think with the last sub-clause (that I emphasized), you answered your question: because the conversation is more intimate, Google learns more about your "true interests", be it to make advertising to you more targeted, or for more sinister purposes.
Now if AI turns out to be the next big thing, they can steer differently next time, sell subscriptions, and avoid all that entanglement with multi-sided markets and layered revenue strategies. At least that’s my take.
Which makes it all the weirder that they seem to be intentionally sabotaging it by nerfing Search into unusability.
Eventually they will break the "trust thermocline" in their search results and that will blow it up but on the way they'll keep making more and more money from every damaging change they make.
Why? The websites we visit can still be infested with google's ads, and so can our gmail accounts, and so can the youtube videos we watch, and they can push ads directly onto our cell phones 24/7. Google has plenty of ways to force ads into your life.
Google used to need search in order to build extensive dossiers on everyone. It told them what people were looking for online. What they were interested in. Now Google has their cell phones, their browser, and their DNS servers doing that for them. Most people are handing all of their browsing history to Google. Google doesn't need search, which is why it's been allowed to atrophy into uselessness.
But what if you don't see distinct ads? LLM advertising can just be paid-for bias in the generated content.
Ad budgets aren't bottomless. People making decisions about them have a lot of options for where to spend. They want provable attribution so they can tell which channel is giving them the most bang for the buck. If that exists, then the ads will be discernible.
You mean like how the instant we see ads on YouTube we will stop using it?
People didn’t stop using Google Search, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and a myriad other services and products (and things like TV before those) because they got ads.