AI search may kill the click. But users still need to trust the answers

It’s hard to think of Google as a comeback story, because it never went away, but in the world of AI, it’s a fitting narrative. The company was broadly mocked for its early moves in the generative era, which were mostly stumbles. Upstarts like Perplexity and ChatGPT were nipping at its market share with arguably innovative experiences. It had to navigate choppy antitrust waters. Today, Google is in a much stronger position. Not because it’s just coming off its I/O developer conference, or because it has the best model or because it commands a major AI ecosystem.