At the risk of sounding too obvious, the excess of ads that Google might impose on users with its AI experience will ruin the otherwise cool idea of integrating AI with search. While we wouldn’t expect Google to refrain from including ads into its AI-powered search — after all Bing is doing that as well — oversaturating it with ads can backfire. If it does, Google will see it in the number of users who stick with or, rather, not stick with its SGE.
If you don’t want to see most ads in search results, use an ad blocker, such as AdGuard. As Google and Microsoft keep inventing new ways to sneak ads into their conversational AI’s answers, we will also be working on finding new ways to block them.
Another option is to use a completely ad-free paid search engine, such as
Brave Search Premium. Sadly, another ad-free subscriptions-based search engine, Neeva, has
just shut down. They had a noble vision of offering users personalization and privacy without ads — a vision that we share. But they faced a huge obstacle: getting users to switch from their default search settings. This shows how Google has entrenched itself as a dominant force on the search engine market, making it hard for users to choose alternatives. But by botching the introduction of AI with ads, Google may risk losing some of its loyal users and opening up opportunities for new competitors. We know it’s a long shot, but we would like to see that happen.
adguard.com
