Today I avoid Google search at all costs, and use it mainly to find Wikipedia pages or to search Reddit.
The Googlers blame SEO and there is some truth to that; but Google has on retainer a huge stable of the world’s best-paid engineers, and still couldn’t be bothered to invest in their flagship service.
LLMs are probably even better suited for monetisation since they have a better understanding of what people want, so a better ad can be shown that is more likely to be clicked.
Do you think people were losing their shit when ChatGPT went into bing simply because web search gets better/easier? No - people were losing their shit because it meant the ads in search are going to be turbo-charged and so that is why the share prices are surging (GOOG up 40% over last 6 months): more ad revenue from "better" ads shown to users.
Hopefully, the future will completely prune intrusive, non-consensual advertising completely and any companies that inject thoughts into our minds will fail.
For some problems. For many more you don't need a "product" at all but advertising still wants to sell you one.
> that is a natural and ethical time to include advertisers into the equation
Not at all. Ads means showing the product of whoever is paying the most or at least preferring paying products over others. Ad-free suggestions means showing the product best suited for the task. If those two match you are defrauding the advertiser by making them pay to show what you would have shown without ads. If they don't match you are degrading the service for the users.
You can do it, I believe in you.