I think this is their obvious strategy. What's not so obvious is that they'll succeed. Their share of consumer LLM users is around 27%. Their share of search engine users is above 91%. If current growth trajectory holds (which is admittedly unpredictable), Google will command
far less of the global internet ad market.
I expect aggregate ad revenue to climb, so this might sting less, but much of Google's stock price imputes their dominant market position (and implied moat). A large proportion of users don't first navigate to Google anymore. They ask ChatGPT. Commoditised LLMs (or worse, a dominant provider which isn't Google) is a very bad scenario for Google.
I think they're going to have to diversify. Cloud compute revenue keeps climbing. Their deal with Apple for "small" LLMs suggests they might have opportunities to specialise models for specific tasks. They still command a massive lead in things like Maps and Gmail, and they can lean on those.