Google Search AI Overhaul Leaves Publishers Bracing For ‘Google Zero’

Roger Lynch, the CEO of Vogue and Vanity Fair parent company Condé Nast, recently told his teams to start planning for a future in which Google sends them effectively no traffic at all — the so-called “Google Zero” effect. It’s a future that suddenly feels a lot less hypothetical after the sweeping AI-centric announcements Google unveiled at its annual developer conference just a few days ago.

Google is rapidly transforming Google Search from a directory of links into an immersive AI assistant — one that increasingly answers questions itself instead of sending users elsewhere, such as to publishers’ websites. This overhaul, which Google is touting as the biggest change ever to its all-important search box, includes delivering conversational answers that turn publisher link into essentially footnotes, which explains Lynch’s grim mandate at…