A large reason LLMs are useful for search and answering questions is because they omit the ads and (LLM-generated!) garbage listicles to give the searcher a straight answer. Ads are, by definition, worse for the searcher. If they were quality and strongly related to the query they would be organic results.
IMO it was always inevitable that companies will put the ads back in, removing this benefit. Perhaps the paid AI offerings will be able to continue focusing on quality results for the searchers.
Right? It really is a racket that the same tool which generates massive amounts of noise can also filter down to some of the signal. Like if I sold tires and also threw fistfuls of nails in parking lots.
IMO it was always inevitable that companies will put the ads back in, removing this benefit. Perhaps the paid AI offerings will be able to continue focusing on quality results for the searchers.