Commentary
Google’s AI evolution is taking the company into uncharted waters, though that may be less of a problem for parent company Alphabet than for advertisers, says Parmy Olson for Bloomberg Opinion.
Google recently announced radical changes to its search tool that will overshadow the page of blue links we’ve been used to seeing for more than a decade. (File photo: AP/Don Ryan)
04 Jun 2026 05:58AM
LONDON: When Google recently announced radical changes to its search tool that will overshadow the page of blue links we’ve been used to seeing for more than a decade, online advertisers had something of a collective freakout. The Alphabet-owned company called it the biggest such shift in more than 25 years, and that the search bar would be “completely reimagined” with artificial intelligence. Forget sponsored links. Now “conversational discovery ads” will be built to sit inside AI answers themselves and potentially include a chat agent so the user never clicks through to a website.On May 19, the day of the announcement, an online-advertising lobbyist I know texted their contact at Google to find out what it meant for their industry. The answer was noncommittal. Even some people at Google don’t seem to know where this will lead.
