Comment by troyvit

Ask any publisher and you will get a resounding "yes, it is very different." On average they're able to attribute about a 33% decrease (globally) in traffic to google's (or others') AI answers. [1]

You're right that there are competitors, but those competitors are doing the same thing: hoovering up content and then not giving anything back for it. There are deals in place for some of the largest publishers [2] [3], but that leaves a ton of content out in the cold. That's going to decrease the amount of content that's out there, which will decrease the quality of AI search. I don't know where that ends, but given how leveraged the economy is in AI it seems like a good idea for somebody to figure it out.

[1] https://pressgazette.co.uk/media-audience-and-business-data/...

[2] https://futureweek.com/a-complete-list-of-publishers-strikin...

[3] https://digiday.com/media/a-timeline-of-the-major-deals-betw...