What happens to the internet if no one clicks search links?

Consider This from NPR

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🗓️ 4 August 2025

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

Google's AI Overviews feature can deliver an answer to your question before you click a single link. But it spells bad news for the publishers that write the articles that power these AI summaries: their business models depend on site visits to sell ads. And some smaller publishers have already gone out of business as the use of AI summaries grows.

"The extinction-level event is already here," said Helen Havlak, publisher of tech news site The Verge.

NPR's John Ruwitch reports on how companies are adapting to the artificial intelligence shake-up in Google search. And Google is a financial supporter of NPR, but we cover them like any other company.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	A big part of the economy of the internet is built around this sound, the click, or, okay,
0:06.6	sometimes the smartphone screen tap.
0:08.9	It's the action that gets you from a search page or a social media feed to a website
0:13.5	where you're shown ads.
0:14.9	But that click could be under threat because of a new feature Google rolled out last year
0:20.2	called AI Overviews.
0:22.2	It uses artificial intelligence to deliver an answer to your question before you click any links.
0:28.0	This is bad news for the companies that produce the information that goes into those answers.
0:33.1	I totally understand the temptation. Why click on a bunch of sources if you can just get a summary?
0:38.3	Claudia Jaswinska is a journalist and researcher at Columbia University. She focuses on the
0:43.5	ways AI is upending the news industry. And she says news outlets don't have many options.
0:49.5	Publishers are kind of in a bind because if you want to opt out of AI overviews, you opt out
0:53.3	of Google search entirely.
0:54.6	Yes, the AI summaries may be costing them visits, but without Google, they would be
0:59.2	in even worse shape.
1:00.8	Helen Havelack is the publisher of the tech news site, The Verge.
1:04.1	She says traffic to her site has been falling, and the decline lines up clearly with
1:08.9	the rise of Google's AI overviews.
1:11.5	Extinction level event is already here, and a bunch of small publishers have already gone out of business.
1:19.2	Consider this. AI is coming for clicks, and the businesses that depend on those clicks are scrambling to survive.
1:30.0	From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro.
1:37.0	Are you looking for the inside scoop on Virginia politics?
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