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Did Google’s early ideals gave way to a closed-loop information system.
Today Google introduced Google Zero, which is said to be based on a zero-click [advertiser] model. Everyone seems a little bit confused by that. Why would Google, one of the richest companies in the world, making nearly all its money from advertising click revenue, introduce something built on zero clicks?
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in my business career is that it’s nearly impossible for mature businesses to cannibalize their money-making or authorization model.
Is Google doing this? At one level, yes. At another, they’re looking ahead—into a business far more profitable: large language model (LLM) management.
We are in one of the most dynamic and evolutionary periods in technology, arguably since the advent of electricity. And the nature of influence is changing.
Social media has surpassed paid search as the world’s largest advertising channel, according to CMSWire.com. This growth is driven in part by the rise of influencer marketing, which fuels spending across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and more.
This shift signals a maturing and diversifying ad economy, where brands are reallocating budgets to find more authentic, trusted, and human connections with their audiences. It’s not just a zero-sum game, paid search and social media often work together, but the power balance is shifting.
So, might we think that large language model management is the most significant form of new-world ‘influencer’ marketing?
When Larry Page and Sergey Brin created the PageRank algorithm in the late 1990s, it changed everything.
Instead of ranking pages by keyword density, PageRank ranked them by reputation.
A page was important if “other important pages” linked to it, actually giving priority to the newest published articles.
It was simple. Democratic. Decentralized. The web became its own credibility engine, and Google merely organized the trust.
In this early model:
- Websites created the content
- Google organized the results
- Users clicked through
- Everyone benefited
It was a virtuous triangle of user → search engine → publisher.
Enter the Zero-Click Paradigm
Fast-forward to today and that triangle has collapsed.
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Enter Google Zero: the answer engine that doesn’t send users anywhere.
In a zero-click search, the information you need appears right there on the results page. You don’t click. You don’t leave. You just read the snippet, the box, the generated AI summary.
What started with weather reports and celebrity birthdays now extends to:
- Medical definitions
- Recipes
- Lyrics
- Sports scores
- Quick facts
- Product summaries
- Even full answers scraped from Reddit or Quora
But here’s the key:
Google, and what I call the “BIG 5” LLM players, didn’t create that information. They sourced it, scraped it and summarized information from publishers who got nothing in return for it.
The user gets the answer.
The publisher, or copyright holder gets zero.
Google (and LLMs) keep the engagement.
From Referrer to Rewriter
Google has shifted from referrer of traffic to rewriter of knowledge. It no longer guides users to the original content; but rather, it distills that content into a platform-native summary, often without attribution.
What started as PageRank, which was a map of trust among independent nodes,
has become PageReplace: extract the value, discard the click, contain the user. One of my big concerns is that AI is serving us up the meals, but we have no idea where the ingredients came from. That revolution has already changed with the “farm-to-table” awareness and sourcing trends. AI is making us not a question where the sources are because it results are so powerful. It’s like the first-time families were able to go out to eat and order things to the table, they were just totally enamored by the experience.
This isn’t just a UX evolution.
It’s a reshuffling of power.
Google now stands between the creator and the audience, absorbing the attention, the authority, and the monetization that used to pass through.
The Museum and the Mirror (A Visual Metaphor)
Imagine the early Google as a museum docent.
It guided you to the gallery, pointed to the painting, and let you read the artist’s name and plaque on the wall.
Now imagine today’s Google as a mirror at the museum entrance.
You see a cropped, color-adjusted reflection of the art in the hallway. You never step inside. You don’t know who painted it. You don’t know why it matters.
Same information.
Different experience.
Only one institution captures the value.
Last Updated on August 4, 2025.
Believe in multi-potentialism and that we are all generally capable of great things. Bob is a serial entrepreneur and seasoned executive who’s spent his career at the intersection of healthcare, education, data, and technology.
