This is one set of speculations trying to counter another set of speculations. Here is my speculation to add to the pile. Google tolerates but does not particul

This is one set of speculations trying to counter another set of speculations. Here is my speculation to add to the pile. Google tolerates but does not particularly like sending traffic to external websites. To the extent that Google can scrape the useful content from websites (and other sources owned by third party rights owners) and provide it to users without those users leaving a Google property, they will do so. LLM chatbots make it easier to scrape this content while gaining plausible deniability when it comes to copyright infringement by creation of derivative works. So, this does not have to be driven by user behavior. The user wants plausibly good enough responses to queries. The user typically wants to pay as little as possible in terms of time and money for those responses. To the extent that Google and other Google-likes can satisfy those users without sending traffic to or paying third party site operators and rights owners, they will do so. Think about it in terms of a speculative video search tool. The user searches Youtube for an answer about a type of tax credit. Above the fold, Google offers to render on the user's machine an LLM generated video answer to their tax question. The video agent will also answer follow up questions without refreshing the page. Below the fold, Google places the Youtube videos. To the extent that users pick the AI result, Google does not need to pay for the third party videos or the traffic costs. At the end of the AI generated video, Google places an inobtrusive paid ad for TumboTax.