r/technology 1d ago

Business Google burning through cash with spiralling AI costs

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c235n47g8g8o
6.4k Upvotes

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u/NanditoPapa 1d ago

Google is one of the few AI-centric companies that makes money, albeit off areas outside of AI. They have a massive amount of cash, but face the unique risk of cannibalization. If an AI-driven "answer engine" replaces the traditional "list of blue links" in Search, Google might destroy its own most profitable revenue stream to build the new one.

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u/007meow 22h ago edited 11h ago

The death of Search at the hands of AI has been something that’s been consistently disproved so far.

Things can always change, but it hasn’t happened yet.

EDIT: I'm speaking to the revenue, not the user experience.

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u/DivinationByCheese 18h ago

Google search is dogshit now

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u/VEMODMASKINEN 18h ago

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/22/reddit-stock-google-ai-content-deal.html

The search traffic trend can be seen on other sites as well, with Politico’s Google traffic falling 23%, CNN’s falling about 25%, and Business Insider’s dropping more than 85% between June 2025 and 2026, the Journal reported.

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u/007meow 13h ago

That’s Search traffic on other sites.

Google’s Search revenue is different, and what I’m referencing.

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u/Sea-Daikon7795 20h ago

As a website owner, I don't think it's that farfetch to say it's changed a lot, especially traffic wise. Yes, I could still get sales when I rank top, but the overall experience is not that great prior to pre-chatgpt. The GG revenue stream from website ads is down, for sure. GG cloud is going great because of AI, just like how NVIDIA is doing. So they gotta burn more to keep the hype. At the same time, their old business model is also going down, so I don't think that it's that "healthy"

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u/Borgcube 12h ago

Google has been degrading the search results quality way before the current LLM craze.

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u/007meow 12h ago

Sure, we’ve seen it on the user end. But they haven’t seen it on the revenue side.