Traditionally, Google’s business model has relied on selling space on its search results page. But what happens if this space is now predominantly filled with unpaid AI snippets?

There is already noticeable evidence of a significant decline in clicks on organic links. Although these links still receive impressions on Google, their reduced visibility means users are less likely to click on them. Moreover, the AI snippets often provide such comprehensive answers that users don’t need to click through to any related web resources, as they already have a satisfactory response. The result is that the CTR (click through rate) has gone done massively, while the impressions remain on more or less same level.

For Google, this likely means a decrease in clicks on paid links, which directly impacts its revenue.

It seems Google is in a transitional phase, adapting to the challenge AI presents to its long-standing practices. Rather than resisting, they are integrating AI into their services, which is a sensible approach.

I speculate that Google might eventually charge companies for having their content used to train the AI algorithm. If companies don’t pay, their content or brand may be excluded from consideration by the AI. Alternatively, Google could introduce sponsored options within the AI snippets. This presents a complex situation for Google and poses challenges for those involved in SEO.

Of course this does not make any sense anymore in today’s time, but we are often acting in a way following this pattern.

If you consciously change your perspective, there is so much beauty in life, often in tiny parts of what we perceive. We can take these things out of the big picture that we see and just enjoy them.

I realized this when I was picking up my kids at a bus stop. The overall scenery was not beautiful, rather the opposite. But then I spotted one tiny fraction within this reality that contained true beauty. I captured it and the idea to repeat this exercise was born.

So I started his challenge to find beauty in my every day life for 100 consecutive days. There have been days when I have felt pressured and I have decided to skip some days. Beauty is missing when there is pressure. These days are marked with an asterisk. I filled these gaps with photography from past beauty experiences in my life.

https://christian-listmann.de/edlb/

The question is – is this really true or is it just an illusion? And why are we so convinced that it is true and an inescapable legality? I remember from my time at IKEA many years ago that they had a delivery cost model where the price went up the more you bought – simply because the freight would be heavier, take up more space and therefore cost more to deliver.  However, customers did not understand or accept this, and everyone felt that at a certain threshold there should be no shipping costs at all. This is understandable, as we have all been infiltrated by the shipping models of the likes of Amazon and Zalando. The question remains whether this really makes sense, even from an environmental point of view – I think that physical laws such as carbon emissions caused by transport are not overridden by economies of scale per se.

But I do not want to go too deep into this area as I think it is very complex and I would rather focus on another aspect of economies of scale. Larger global organisations have different ways of buying products and services from suppliers – they can do it centrally at a global level, they can do it at a regional level, or they can do it at a very local level.

If you asked 100 people what’s the most efficient option, I think the majority would say the globally centralised option. Our simple rule of buy more, get more discount comes into play again. Again, I want to question whether this is true. In particular, I think that when you are buying services rather than goods from a supplier, the relationship between buyer and seller becomes even more important.

1. I think it also depends a lot on the structure of the global company that is buying the goods. Often you have a global layer in the company that makes the deal with global suppliers to get the most out of the spend. The challenge I see here is that this global layer is not dealing with the consequences of that deal later on, so the accountability is not fully there. Of course they feel responsible, but the pressure to get the best deal is probably higher when you are buying for yourself rather than on behalf of someone else. And in reality, other teams at a regional or local level will be working with the supplier, although they may not have chosen the supplier and established the relationship.
2. Global vendors are often less efficient in their nature compared to smaller speedboat type vendors. More or less mirroring the paradigm above, the structure of a global vendor also influences the efficiency of a global purchase and whether or not it can outperform local purchases. Again, I think this has to do with the intentions of the people involved. A small supplier owned by a specific person has a natural interest in maintaining and nurturing the personal relationship with a customer over a long period of time. This is often different in global structures where there is a lot of turnover in the workforce and therefore less interest in maintaining a long-term relationship based on trust and give and take.
3. When buying services, it is easier for a very local player to maintain service standards than for a fragmented global player. Often, global service offerings are created by putting together networks, which is not bad in itself, but you cannot guarantee a certain level of service quality and the corporate culture that all members of that network may have can be very different. This simply leads to an inconsistent experience.

The concept of economies of scale is often misunderstood and may not always hold true. Factors such as increased delivery costs and environmental impact challenge the idea that buying more leads to lower costs. The efficiency of global organizations in purchasing goods and services is influenced by the buyer-seller relationship and the accountability of the global layer. Smaller vendors may be more efficient due to their personal interest in maintaining long-term relationships. Local players have an advantage in maintaining service standards compared to fragmented global players. Overall, caution and consideration of various factors are necessary when considering economies of scale.

Im zweiten Teil des Gesprächs mit Alex tauchen wir in seine persönliche Geschichte ein, seine Beziehung zu seinem Vater und inwieweit sich eine Schwäche je nach Kontext oder Situation als eine Stärke entpuppen kann.

Teil 1:

Teil 2:

Sometimes we take things for granted and fail to see the beauty in the little things and the magic that happens every day. For me, there is magic every day when I go to work. Seeing you working together, laughing together, sometimes being angry or upset together. It is all a great gift to me.

You are all very different and I love that about you, everyone brings something different to the table and shares it with everyone else in the team without necessarily wanting anything in return. It fascinates me every day to see all these different nationalities and cultures being so calm and joyful with each other, which often makes me think about why we have so much conflict out there in the world.

But while everyone is different, each of you carry within you this intrinsic desire to make long lasting and deep, honest connections – I think that is the fire that I see radiating warmth to this group every day. For me it is the driving force behind everything we do together and I am so grateful to be able to spend my days with such great people.

Like any relationship, this one has evolved over the past 6 years. I have learned so much from all of you in that time, listening to you, watching you work together to get things done. It has helped me grow and I think you all have grown a lot too, which brings a smile to my face.

Of course, there’s so much more to life than work, but we all spend a lot of time in this environment and that’s why it makes me so happy to have you around every day.

Thank you for being there as individuals and as a team.
Christian

Andreas Kramer ist Imker aus Leidenschaft. Im Gespräch auf seinem Hof tauchen wir in das Thema ein, wie Menschen über die Verbindung mit der Natur wieder in ihre Kraft kommen können und warum es aus seiner Sicht in der Natur selten eine Antwort auf die Frage gibt, was nun eine Schwäche und eine Stärke ausmacht.

https://www.kramerhonig.de/