Even if they include ads in Gemini the issue is that Gemini is not the best AI app. It’s maybe the 3rd or 4th. So if Google becomes the 3rd best “search/AI engine” the future is not that bright.
Search's AI mode is by far the most popular "AI app". Most of the time I don't end up using Gemini, it's because search's AI mode is good enough for my needs and I use it out of habit. I imagine a lot of other would-be Gemini users are in similar shoes.
Google doesn't care if you use Gemini or Google search. But they are so so happy if the ai results in search are "good enough" that you don't need to go use a "frontier llm"
Gemini is a brand new surface that Google has created to capture the current excitement around AI, but it's not the only surface into which they're shoving AI.^
ChatGPT's growth is incredible, but they essentially have to get all of their growth from inside codex or ChatGPT apps. Google can auto query Gemini with every search. There's an interesting piece of data which is that this tells them (on a conditioned basis^^) when is the chat result more effective than the search and vice versa?
Google can force growth of Gemini by leveraging their existing properties. This is a huge asset, and if you're wondering why Meta has artificially high usage of their LLMs it's because distribution is hard and Meta and Google have a lot of surface area to distribute on
^ no, I don't mean this as a compliment, although it does lend credence to the idea that Google is willing to update its current products with AI.
^^ ie conditional on the user's willingness to view the chat result
