I expect somewhere in the AI harness there's a branch that effectively mandates "You must always answer."
Which results in it grasping at Reddit comment straws.
And which, in typically modern Google fashion, nobody there gives a shit about fixing, because the PR made their top-level AI KPI go brr.
Google is increasingly proof that you can't run an effective scaled tech company without a Gates or Jobs who occasionally uses the fucking product themselves and descends with fiery vengeance on whatever team drifted too far from user alignment.
But isn't the whole point (I mean, aside from making infinite money or world domination or whatever) of the AI that it'll do the hard work of finding the information? Like, that's the whole value proposition of the AI summary in the search results, right?
And is still likely wrecking their query unit economics in order to avoid hemorrhaging search to LLMs.
Propping search usage up and putting the expense in the massive AI capex probably looks better to investors though.