Nilay Patel, Editor-In-Chief of The Verge, interviewed Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, at Google I/O, and the 40-minute interview released yesterday dug into a lot of the concerns we have been covering here. This includes how AI Overviews may kill the web, how smaller/independent publishers are dying, and if we can get data in Search Console.

Here is the interview, well worth watching:

At 4 minutes in, Nilay showed some of the headlines on how Google’s AI Overviews will kill the web and the publishing industry. Sundar responded that there were similar headlines in 2010, similar headlines when users switched to mobile devices, similar headlines when featured snippets launched. In short, Sundar thinks the web will not just be fine but grow.

He said, “I remain optimistic.” “I think users are looking for high-quality content,” meaning, people who read AI Overviews, want to see more information from publishers.

He even said, what Hema from Google told me, “In fact, if you put content and links within AI Overviews, they get higher clickthrough rates than if you put it outside of AI Overviews.”

Then Nilay brought up the Housefresh and Retro Dodo small and independent publishers and how those sites are literally dying. Note, they are not dying from AI Overviews, but from the Google core updates (I am not sure Sundar knew this…).

Pichai responded, “It’s always difficult to talk about individual cases, and at the end of the day, we are trying to satisfy user expectations.” Sundar Pichai said he is not seeing this trends on an aggregate basis, meaning, there are always going to be individual sites complaining but as the whole, things are going the right way for most publishers. He said:

He then says again, people are clicking off AI Overviews to publishers. He said, “But overall, when we look at user journeys, when you give the context, it also exposes people to jumping-off points, and so they engage more.” He added:

“There’s a lot of debate about what high-quality content is. At least in my experience, I value independent sources, I value smaller things, I want more authentic voices. And I think those are important attributes we are constantly trying to improve,” he added.

And then about AI Overviews being the answer and not driving traffic. Sundar said if they do that, what incentive would there be for publishers to continue to create content. Google would need that content and it is not in th best interest for Google to decentivies the creation of high quality content.

Then Nilay mentioned this blog, saying:

This is how he answered that – in short, it is up to the Search team, not him:

Sundar also said if Google can sift through the AI answers and provide high quality responses and weed out the low quality responses, that is where they can win. He said, “how do we differentiate high quality from low quality? I literally view it as our mission statement, and it is what has defined Search over many, many years.” “Our entire search quality team has been spending the last year gearing up our ranking systems, etc., to better get at what high-quality content is. If I take the next decade, [the] people who can do that better, who can sift through that, I think, will win out,” he added.

Then Nilay took Sundar through some examples of AI Overviews and asked if Google is the destination or way point. One example was a copy word-for-word of a publisher. In which, Sundar replied that you can always find bad examples and one-offs but overall, the AI Overviews are adding value and will continue to get better.

Here are some good posts on this interview that I found:

Danny Goodwin has a good summary of the key points from the interview over here too.

Forum discussion at X.