It seems like they should have a model similar to YouTube. If I watch a video on YouTube made by someone, they get a little cash, and it ads up.
Similarly, if I use Gemini uses a website for an answer, it should pay something to those sites for the information it gathered. Sites would need to sign up to earn via Google, and I'd imagine there would be a certain threshold to cross to make it worth cutting checks... but that would make all these AI search tools feel much less scummy while providing site owners an incentive to keep sharing information on the internet.
Where a model like this would get messy is with sites like reddit. It's a very popular source for AI search, but the value comes from the users, not the platform itself.
Actually it cannot work this way, content creators make far more money from ads in the video itself compared to the one yt gives them. If it were for yt money alone basically we will still be in the 2010 yt: folks that doing it just for fun.
The problem with all this AI/llm stuff is that end users doesn't even know your tiny site with a lot of useful information exists at all.