--- title: "Google Starved Out Publishers With AI Search. Now, Its Pivot Is Blowing Up in Its Face." description: "Google stock plummeted after it admitted that its AI Mode was raking in less money than its traditional search ad model." date: "2026-10-29" modified: "2026-10-29" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore.md" url: "https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/google-starved-out-publishers-ai-mode-revenue" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Google" --- # Google Starved Out Publishers With AI Search. Now, Its Pivot Is Blowing Up in Its Face. ![A photo illustration of a sign at Google's offices.]() *Shutterstock / Futurism* Woe is Google. After it starved out publishers with its AI features, it's now getting a taste of its own medicine. Shares of its parent company Alphabet took an over 11 percent nosedive on Wednesday, after it disclosed that its AI search features are raking in less money than its traditional search ad model. The steep correction [wiped out more than $500 billion in market value](). In its Q3 report, Google [reported]() a quarterly revenue of $127.6 billion, a 25 percent year over year increase. But it's also spending more, with capital expenditures more than doubling from last year to $51.4 billion, largely thanks to its massive AI investments. Meanwhile, the growth of its revenue from search seems to be tapering off. It reported a 12 percent year-over-year increase to $63.3 billion, which is less than the 14.5 percent growth it reported in the same period last year. That's despite Google Search fielding more queries than ever. Google chief business officer Philipp Schindler admitted in an earnings call, [per *Search Engine Land*](), that this was because of "lower monetization we're seeing in AI Mode," its AI-powered search experience that works more like a chatbot instead of showing the traditional ten blue links. It's an ironic, but perhaps not unforeseen, downturn for Google. When ChatGPT became global phenomenon in late 2022, questions were soon asked regarding if a shift to using chatbots to obtain information over a traditional search engine would topple Google's ludicrous advertising empire, which earns the company [hundreds of billions of dollars each year](). Google responded by developing its own AI features, including its [notoriously unreliable AI Overviews](), and prominently integrating them into its search engine. This came at the expense of the websites and publishers that its AI models were pilfering from: users were happy to read error-plagued summaries instead of visiting the websites that contained the original information, depriving these sites of clicks and ad revenues. Despite Google's repeated claims to the contrary, multiple studies have demonstrated that AI Overviews [have destroyed click-through rates](). This has had a disastrous effect on the media landscape, with data compiled by *Axios* showing that the [number of visits to top news sites plummeted]() from over 70 million visitors a month in July of 2024 — the year that Google launched AI Overviews — to just over 47 million in July of 2026. Media leaders who responded to a *Reuters Institute* survey [are grim about the future](), predicting traffic to their websites to fall by nearly half over the next three years amidst this AI-dominated paradigm. Now, Google is getting a taste of this too, earning less advertising dollars from its AI Mode than from the traditional search that it is so eager to abandon. It seemingly hasn't considered what comes next after the websites it earns money off of all go out of business. Chief business officer Schindler, though, was adamant that Google will soon start squeeze more money out of AI Mode. "On AI Mode, many of these queries are upper funnel queries, allowing us to capture new, high-value commercial intent," he argued. "In addition, the majority of AI Mode queries are incremental, creating more monetization opportunities over time." **More on AI:** [*AI Is Creating "Doom Loops" All Over the Economy*]() ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]() ## More - [Google Announces “AI Mode” For Search Results That Only Shows You AI Slop]() - [Google Accuses Users of Exaggerating Problems With Its Disastrous AI Search Tool]() - [Google Now Stuffing Ads Into Its AI Products]() - [Google’s Search AI Says You Can Melt Eggs. Its Source Will Make You Facepalm]() - [Google Admits Its AI Search Feature Is a Dumpster Fire, Says It Will Scale Back the Tool]() - [Google Pushing Its Unsafe Search AI on Users Who Didn’t Opt In]() - [Google’s Search AI Recommends Changing Your Car’s Blinker Fluid, Which Is a Made Up Thing That Does Not Exist]() - [Google CEO Says 25 Percent of Its Code Is Now AI-Generated]()