> Is there a reason why AI cannot be far better than Google at providing results to queries?
No, but there is a reason to suspect that other AI has a big challenge there, and that is that Google is a trillion dollar company who is a leader in both search and AI and whose investment in AI has always been significantly about both improving its ability to respond to queries and avoiding needing queries in favor of proactively supplying information.
And also that the most productive means of using AI to respond to queries about material facts continues to rely on something search-like supporting an LLM for grounding.
> Furthermore, it appears that Google just sells off placement to the highest bidder, and these AIs could easily beat that by giving free AI access in exchange for nibbling at the queries and adding a tab of 'sponsored results'
Google already provides free AI access, uses it by default to respond to most queries, and puts it above the sponsored results, with a link to go into a more focussed AI interface for further exploration.
No, but there is a reason to suspect that other AI has a big challenge there, and that is that Google is a trillion dollar company who is a leader in both search and AI and whose investment in AI has always been significantly about both improving its ability to respond to queries and avoiding needing queries in favor of proactively supplying information.
And also that the most productive means of using AI to respond to queries about material facts continues to rely on something search-like supporting an LLM for grounding.
> Furthermore, it appears that Google just sells off placement to the highest bidder, and these AIs could easily beat that by giving free AI access in exchange for nibbling at the queries and adding a tab of 'sponsored results'
Google already provides free AI access, uses it by default to respond to most queries, and puts it above the sponsored results, with a link to go into a more focussed AI interface for further exploration.