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Google I/O 2026 felt like one of the most significant versions of the company’s annual product showcase in a long time. There were many announcements at the event – no fewer than 100 major ones according to Google itself – ranging from new Gemini-powered “Googlebook” laptops to the intelligent Universal Cart shopping cart. 

Yet, the main takeaway was that Google would be making the most fundamental changes to the product that it built its success on, Google Search. The company announced wholesale changes, “reimagining Search with AI,” which would represent the biggest changes in 25 years. It’s going to focus much more on AI Mode, i.e., the conversational search with Gemini. 

Google is pushing users to AI Mode 

The upshot is quite simple: Google will nudge you into a conversation about your search results instead of a list of links to websites. It is basically an extension of the current AI Overviews that greet some search queries today.  Google maintains that you will still get the list of websites, though that, in itself, isn’t the issue for now. The main concern is that Google’s changes could lead to lower traffic for some websites. 

The best way to consider it is like placing a product on a shelf in a grocery store. Google’s AI overviews and Intelligent Search features will be in your eyeline, whereas traditional website links will be on the bottom shelf; still there but harder to find. 

Of course, it depends on the type of search you conduct. Most “doing” search results will still nudge you toward a website. For example, if you googled “watch movies on Netflix “ or looked for a sweepstakes casino online, the results will take you to your intended destination. It’s not the kind of query that opens up a conversation with an AI bot. 

Blogs and reference websites could be hurt

On the other hand, queries like “who was the 35th President?” or “authentic lasagna recipe” will naturally lean into the AI Mode conversation. For the former, you’ll inevitably get the answer (John F. Kennedy) and AI mode will both provide you with the information and nudge you into a conversation to find out more. 

You can see from the results above that there are results on the right, which you could click to enter a site like Wikipedia or the JFK Library. But the fear for these websites is that the basic information is already there. For instance, you would not need to go to Wikipedia to get info like Kennedy’s D.O.B or basic information on his assassination. 

Big platforms like Wikipedia will probably be okay, though they may take a hit in traffic, but smaller information sites, such as blogs, might run into more headwinds. It’s the reason we gave the example of a lasagna recipe. The information can be presented succinctly by AI, and it is, indeed, the kind of thing that instigates follow-up questions and a conversation.

The issue at hand, then, is what happens to that Italian cookery blog? Fewer clicks mean less advertising revenue and other incentives to keep creating content, and they also carry the risk of creating a knowledge vacuum. If humans aren’t constantly putting information online, such as traditional food recipes, then there is a risk that the knowledge available to AI will become stale. Yes, you can argue that AI will evolve to perhaps exceed human knowledge, even in areas like cooking, but it’s not certain, and we most certainly are not at that point yet. 

New revenue models may be adopted 

So, what’s the answer? Well, first of all, we need to see how the internet reacts to Google’s changes. Not everyone likes AI Mode, and people are voting with their installs and uninstalls: Rival search engines saw a surge in downloads the week of Google I/O. Google is always going to be influential in the search engine sector, but its dominance is not guaranteed to last forever. 

There are suggestions that the web economy could be changed to accommodate AI. For instance, what if instead of receiving ad revenue each time a user visits your website, you receive revenue when an AI web crawler scrapes your content? Or you receive revenue if your content was used to form part of an AI Overview? These ideas should not seem outlandish, and companies like Cloudflare have already begun to explore the idea. 

Yet for now, we should be cautious. The transformation of search and discovery, even if it is staggered, will upend the pillars of the web we have become accustomed to over the last 25-30 years. Products evolve, but there are usually winners and losers when they do.