Google Search VP Kathy Edwards joins us to break some news about some rather interesting changes to Google Search and to discuss generative AI's role in their work.

And what's with those SEOs? All that and more coming up right after this.

Will AI improve our lives or exterminate the species? What would it take to abolish poverty? Are you eating

enough fermented foods? These are some of the questions we've tackled recently on the next big

idea. I'm Rufus Griscombe, and every week I sit down with the world's leading thinkers for

in-depth conversations that will help you live, work, and play smarter.

Follow the next big idea wherever you get your podcasts.

LinkedIn Presents

Welcome to Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond.

Today we're joined by Kathy Edwards, a VP of Search at Google.

We've talked before.

It's great to have you on the show so we can actually continue this conversation to break some of your news and also follow up on some of the conversations that we've had before.

Kathy, welcome to the show. Thanks, Alex. It's great to be here.

Great to have you. The last time we spoke, you and I were having a little bit of a disagreement

about generative search experiences. I was saying that I had some worry about as a publisher,

would traffic ever come to publishers anymore

if everybody's just going to get all the answers at the top of search? And you had mentioned

that this would spark people's interest in going to visit a number of different links. And so

it's really the main question about this product is, is it going to keep people within Google or still make room for the open web? You're a number of months into the labs experiment right now

where people search. They get a conversational answer at the top through the search generative

experience. I have that turned on in my labs and you have the data. So what are you seeing

right now and where my fears overblown?

...