Stages of google grief:
0) AI language models are not a threat
1) Per query AI model inference hurts margin
2) AI model search kills clickthrough, hurts revenue
3) The text prompt interface lives in end-client software, hurts traffic
The market is still debating 0 and 1

One can make the case that Alphabet’s entire corporate culture is constructed around the concept of search as a cashflow geyser.

All of the decision-making architecture, cross-subsidization, open-sourcing of otherwise commercializable material--all fed by the search cashflow spume

Unpicking those habits and processes (and business-units and loss-centers) will likely happen much later than it should.

There is huge embedded institutional leverage against search’s cashflow, and it would be difficult, inside the org to understand or recognize the ways in which that leverage has accrued (and the degree to which internal resources will fight against unwinding it).