Google AI Previews Misunderstand Why People Use Google

Last month, we looked at some of the most incorrect, dangerous, and downright weird answers generated by Google’s new AI Overviews feature. Since then, Google has issued a partial apology/explanation for generating these types of results and has reportedly canceled the feature’s rollout for at least some types of queries.

But the more I think about this deployment, the more I begin to question the wisdom of Google’s AI-powered search results. Even when the system doesn’t give blatantly false results, condensing search results into a neat, compact, AI-generated summary seems like a fundamental misunderstanding of how people use Google in the first place.

Reliability and relevance

When people type a question into the Google search bar, sometimes they only want the kind of basic reference information that can be found on a Wikipedia page or company website (or even a snippet Google information). Often, they’re looking for subjective information for which there is no “right” answer: “What are the best Mexican restaurants in Santa Fe?” or “What should I do with my kids on a rainy day?” or “How can I keep cheese from sliding off my pizza?”

The value of Google has always been to direct you to places it thinks you are likely have good answers to these questions. But it’s still up to you, the user, to determine which of these sources is the most reliable and relevant to your needs at the moment.

For reliability reasons, any savvy Internet user uses countless contextual clues to judge a random Internet search result. Do you recognize the media or the author? Is the information coming from someone with apparent professional expertise/experience or from a random forum poster? Is the site well designed? Has this been around for a while? Does he cite other sources that you trust, etc. ?

But Google also doesn’t know in advance which specific result will match the type of information you’re looking for. When it comes to restaurants in Santa Fe, for example, do you want an authoritative list from a respected newspaper critic or more outlandish suggestions from random locals? Or maybe you scroll down a bit and come across a story loosely related to the history of Mexican culinary influences in the city.

One of the strengths of Google’s search algorithm is that the user can decide which results suit them best. As long as there is something reliable and relevant in those first few pages of results, it doesn’t matter if the other links are “bad” for that particular search or user.