Google is cannibalizing the web to feed AI
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Google is cannibalizing the web to feed AI
Google Search used to direct users to web sites; AI Mode will keep them in Google's garden
Thomas Claburn
Thomas<br>Claburn
Senior reporter
Published<br>mon 25 May 2026 // 13:25 UTC
OPINION At Google's I/O 2026 developer conference last week, the company's Search VP Liz Reid celebrated the rapid growth of AI Mode, which Google refers to as its end-to-end AI search experience. External observers refer to it as simply as the end of search.<br>"We're seeing phenomenal growth with AI mode queries more than doubling every quarter since launch," said Reid, noting that AI Mode now has more than one billion monthly users.<br>She continued, "But what's even more remarkable, you're asking your real questions in all their super specific and detailed glory, knowing search can really tackle them."
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Reid is absolutely right! We put this real question to AI Mode, "Why does Google Search suck now?" And you won't believe the answer! (Actually, you won't be surprised.)
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The Chocolate Factory's AI search substitute offered this completely trustworthy reply:<br>"You are definitely not imagining it. Users, tech critics, and researchers have documented a measurable decline in Google Search quality. The core issue is that the search engine no longer feels like a tool designed to find the best corner of the web; instead, it feels like a vehicle designed to keep you on Google-owned properties or clicking on monetized links.<br>"The degradation of Google Search stems from a mix of aggressive monetization, an ongoing arms race with web spammers, and the disruptive introduction of AI features."<br>Despite the absence of explicit blame assignment and the obsequious initial sentence, this all seems reasonable. However, in the low-rent area of the results page, there was some fine print: "AI can make mistakes, so double-check responses."<br>In other words, Google disclaims responsibility for AI Mode while providing a way for you, the user, to double-check its responses. If you look carefully at the results, you may see citation links back to the websites laundered to generate the unvouched-for text.
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The top AI Mode paragraph represents the remains of four morsels of online text swallowed and digested by Google's site crawler: "This is Why Google Search is Dying* and How to Search Instead" from Tadeusz Szewczyk's seo2 blog, "Why Has Google Search Become So Annoyingly Bad? (and some useful workarounds)," a post to Medium by Terry Hutchins, a Reddit thread titled, "Is Google Search actually getting worse, or is it just me?" by Severe_Aardvark_3109, and "Some Simple Economics of the Google Antitrust Case" by Alex Tabarrok.<br>The second paragraph is calling from within Google's house. It's sourced from a YouTube video by AlexFalcone and a different Reddit thread, "Am I going crazy or are search engine results becoming less and less accurate?" by Ok-Extent-7596.<br>Google generously presents these links, in the form of inline citations or source chips – clickable, numbered footnotes that have been embedded with AI Mode emissions – as a nod to shouty traditionalists who value information provenance.
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Not that it helps these websites much. As noted recently by SEO biz Ahrefs, "Google's AI Overviews now result in a 58 percent lower average clickthrough rate for top-ranking pages, up from 34.5 percent just eight months ago." (Google last year said the opposite.)<br>AI Overviews differ from AI Mode. AI Overviews have been integrated into the Search experience and appear in response to certain kinds of queries, generally atop traditional search results.<br>AI Mode "expands on the benefits of AI Overviews with more advanced reasoning and multimodal capabilities," as Google puts it in its explainer [PDF]. It's accessible through a tab icon on the right-hand side of Chrome's omnibox when a new tab is opened and through an "AI Mode" button within the Google.com search box.<br>They may or may not provide similar answers and may or may not cite the same sources.<br>For example, when we put the question "Why does Google Search suck now?" to AI Overviews, here's what we got:<br>"Google Search often feels worse today because it prioritizes profits over precision. The search results page is heavily cluttered with AI-generated summaries, sponsored ads, and search-engine-optimized (SEO) spam, which forces you to dig past multiple links to find the actual information you want."<br>Google's AI again cites Szewczyk's seo2 blog as a reference, along with two new sources, "These Results Illustrate Why Google Search Is So Awful in...